V.A. Saturday

In 1985 the first volume of Pay It All Back was released by On U Sound, a compilation that turned into a series that serve as budget priced primers and round ups of On U sounds as well as outlets for unreleased tracks and alternate mixes. Pay It All Back Volume 8 came out in 2022, another edition of Adrian Sherwood's singular vision of dub, reggae, electro/ industrial with umpteen legendary artists across the series. This is a trio of tracks as a selection, a mere scratching of the surface. 

From 1988's Volume 2, this is Dub Syndicate, a studio sample- fest with pots and pans percussion, electric drills, radio announcements and between station static, guitars and with the mighty Lee 'Scratch' Perry.

Train To Doomsville

From Volume 4 in 1993, Little Annie- horns, bass and Annie's so distinctive New York voice. 

Bless Those

Finally, from 2022's Volume 8, Tackhead and LSK, pummelling electro- dub from Doug Wimbish, Skip McDonald and the late Keith Leblanc with Leigh Steven Kenny on vox. 

Rulers And Foolers

Pass A Wish And Take Me To The House

Out today on Brighton's always reliable Higher Love label is one of my favourite EPs of the summer, Pandit Pam Pam's Pass A Wish with a pair of Jezebell remixes. Pandit Pam Pam is an electronic musician from Sao Paulo whose album Camburi came out in July (and featured some guest spots from Henry Olsen, formerly the bass player for Primal Scream in their late 80s/ early 90s pomp and before that part of Nico's touring band in the 80s). I wrote about Camburi here. Eduardo, one of the two men behind Pandit Pam Pam also puts music out on his Boston Medical Group label and has sent me music from time to time, including releases by Feriasdasferias. On Pass A Wish Eduardo in Sao Paulo gets remixed by my favourite remix/ edit pair Jezebell, Jesse (in Stockholm) and Darren (in London). 

Pass A Wish is a dreamy, floaty four minutes of music, built around a fluttering rhythm and with horns hinting at its Brazilian origins and surroundings. The synths bubble away and a female voice drifts on top, somewhere between singing and talking. It nods in the direction of A Man Called Adam's 1990/ 1991 sound- yep, that good. 

The pair of Jezebell remixes both transport Pass A Wish elsewhere. Jezebell's 50 Ways Remix presumably tips its hat at Paul Simon's 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover (whose drum break has been sampled widely, not least by one Andrew Weatherall on his head spinning remix of Love Corporation's Give Me Some Love). The drums give it a funky, constant motion while the synths and voice swirl around the rhythm and the chopped up horn drops in and out. Very cool indeed. 

Jezebell's Leave Your Lover Mix is sleek and chuggy, a different rhythm and feel, more night time with handclaps and percussion leading the charge, the horn chopped up and FXed even more, everything pushed a little further into the cosmos. The Pass A Wish EP is available at Bandcamp from today. You know what to do. 

Also out today is the latest release from teenage wonderkid OBOST. Take Me To The House was one of the standouts on OBOST's debut album (released at the start of this year), a shimmering, multi- coloured slice of electronic euphoria, rising and falling synths and four four drums. On the new EP the original is reworked into Take Me To The Basement, a slowed down version with a juddering rhythm and fizzing synths. 

There's a remix too by Tronik Youth, a much beatier, more percussive version, with a no nonsense kick drum, pulsing synthlines and heading straight to the heart of the dancefloor. The EP is out today and again, available at Bandcamp. 

These Days

What music does the end of August need? It needs dance music, music for sunshine and beer gardens, for driving to the coast with the windows down, music with rippling synthlines, arpeggios, four four drums, piano, chanted vox and the tinge of knowing that this is the end of summer. 

Llewellyn's These Days (Don't Make Me Wait) came out in 2019, end of the night house/ disco from Germany. Andrew Weatherall closed an ALFOS with it in early 2020, to a rapturous reception by all accounts.  

These Days (Don't Make Me Wait)

I Am Beside You

We had a couple of days in London last week. One of the things we did was visit Isaac's name at the National Covid Memorial Wall on the walkway besides the Thames, opposite the Houses of Parliament. It's 500 metres long, a public mural with over 200, 000 red hearts painted on the wall and thousands of them then personalised to remember a person who died with Covid as the direct cause of death on the death certificate. A friend wrote Isaac's name onto the wall in early December 2021, in the week after he died. We've visited it three or four times now. One of the things I wanted to do when we went last week was re- ink his name. A lot of them are fading now.  

It's a strange thing and always very moving. When we go to his grave at the cemetery it feels like we are going to see him, that that is where he (or part of him) resides. Our weekly routine includes a trip to the cemetery. Going to the Covid wall feels different. It's in a part of central London that is always busy with tourists. As we walked away from the wall, a small group of people were talking, in a very matter of fact kind of way.

'What's this?'

'It's a memorial for all the British people who died from Covid'.

'Ok.'

That is what it is but so much more. It's a place which is deeply personal but also very public, opposite one of the most famous buildings in the world and while our grief has been very personal to us, at the Covid wall he's part of something else, part of a national, global, catastrophe. Each and every heart of the wall is a person and behind every heart, name and message is a larger group of people, friends and family, permanently affected by this. That he is a part of this always affects me in a way that is different from going to see him at the cemetery.

Covid seems so long ago now- the initial fear as scenes from Italian TV showed genuine horror in their hospitals, the lockdowns, the working from home, Zoom, an hour's exercise a day, how unlocking would work, tiers, the total mess created by Johnson's government, the winter lockdown of early 2021, masks, the vaccine, the oft mentioned 'new normal', and the highly optimistic feeling from some that we might construct a slightly different approach to doing things as a society afterwards. 

I watched the Nick Cave film This Much I Know To Be True this week, a 2022 documentary directed by Andrew Dominik, capturing the working relationship between Nick and Warren Ellis in 2021 as they play various songs from Ghosteen and Carnage, a pair of albums directly informed by the death of Arthur Cave. There is a section where Nick talks through his ceramics (eighteen Staffordshire ceramic figures telling a story of the life of the devil), a part with Marianne Faithful, and Nick at his laptop talking about The Red Hand Files, the questions he receives from fans and how he responds to them. The live sections, Nick and Warren, a string section and three backing singers, are incredible, cathartic performances- filmed I realised as watching it, during Covid and the summer of 2021 when the world began to creep back to some kind of normality. In an interview section Nick talks about one of the emails sent to him at The Red Hand Files and how he sees himself. Nick says where once he would have described/ defined himself as a musician and writer, now after Arthur's death, he was trying to see himself not as those labels but as a husband, father, friend and citizen, who also sings and writes. 

In this clip from the film Nick sings the song Ghosteen Speaks, a song which opens with the words, 'I am beside you/ Look for me', a lyric where Nick feels Arthur's presence.

'I think they've gathered here for me', Ghosteen/ Arthur says in the song, via Nick, 'I am beside you/ You are beside me/ I think they're singing to be free/ I think my friends have gathered here for me/ To be beside me/ Look for me...'

It's an extraordinarily powerful song for me, one that I hear and feel a bit differently now than I did two years ago. Time doesn't heal but you can get used to living with the permanent scar of grief. 

Ghosteen Speaks

What Do I Get Out Of This?

Wythenshawe Park, 70 acres of green, open space in South Manchester with a 16th century half- timbered hall and statue of Oliver Cromwell at its centre, played host to a 30, 000 capacity gig headlined by New Order on Saturday. Nadine Shah who kicked things off in fine style, her band playing repetitive, crunching post- punk/ indie rock with Nadine's theatrical, huge voice the c point.  Greatest Dancer from this year's Filthy Underneath was a highlight, booming out in the late afternoon sunshine. Having spoken passionately about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, she spends the last few minutes of the final song screaming the word 'ceasefire' into the mic as the band kicked up a glorious racket, before leaving the stage to squeals of feedback. 

Roisin Murphy is on shortly after, a singer with connections to Manchester- she lived here during the late 80s and early 90s. Her set is a well honed and highly entertaining forty minutes of dance music and costume changes, Roisin the queen of Wythenshawe Park. 

One outfit has her wearing a massive oversized, square biker jacket, another a black top hat and robes with a life size model of a baby on a necklace which she ignores until the instrumental break at which point she stands centre stage cuddling it. Later on she is bedecked in a giant, head- to - toe red frill. Her songs sound equally impressive, Moloko's The Time Is Now getting a rework and Incapable from 2020's Machine both stand out, the latter a long extended disco- house groove. Sing It Back is fused with Murphy's Law and she closes her set by sauntering through Can't Replicate and then having a huge amount of fun with an onstage camera that is feeding directly onto the big screen behind her, finishing with an extreme close up of the inside of her mouth.

Incapable

Local lad Johnny Marr takes the stage at 7.30, the venue filling up. Johnny grew up round here- 'Wythenshawe Park, Saturday night', he says between songs with a rueful grin. Johnny and his band are on it from the start, electrifying and plugged in to the crowd, playing eleven songs that span his career, from The Smiths to Electronic to his solo albums. Second song in he plays the clanging riff that intros Panic and we're putty in his hands. Generate is sparky post- punk pop. This Charming Man sends the crowd into a spin, dancing and singing the words from a song he wrote with a man from Stretford forty years ago back at him. 

In the middle of the set he switches to acoustic guitar and plays Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want, a long finger picking introduction before singing it very sweetly. I have a bit of a moment during this song, tears and everything, something that has been happening to me a gigs since Isaac died. He follows Please, Please, Please... by introducing another Wythenshawe lad, 'the king of the Wythenshawe guitarists' according to Johnny, Billy Duffy to the stage and they drive into How Soon Is Now, Billy finding space for a Cult- like guitar solo as Johnny and the band shimmer and surge through the song.

The final pair of songs are equally crowd pleasing- first Electronic's 1989 single, the sublime pop of Getting Away With It (Bernard doesn't appear to sing this with him alas) and then the mass singalong of There Is A Light That Never Goes Out, a song that despite the doom- laden lyrics with death arriving by being crushed by ten ton trucks and double decker busses, is a song of optimism and survival, an anthem for the young and not- so- young everywhere. 

Getting Away With It

There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

Prior to New Order's appearance DJ Tin Tin raises the temperature with a set of songs, played from a table and decks set up at the front of the stage with A Certain Ratio's It All Comes Down To This sounding great as the sun went down. Then, five minutes of dry ice, films of gymnasts and divers and orchestral music pave the way for New Order. It's dark by now, the lights on, the stage dramatic and dark, as Bernard walks to the centre and straps on his guitar. The venue is rammed by now. We have a spot down the front to the right. They open with Academic from 2015's Music: Complete and then go into Crystal (the highlight of 2001's Get Ready, a post- reformation song that showed they still had what it takes). The crowd have come from near and far. Half of Manchester seems to be here, teenagers and sixty- somethings. The two young men next to us have flown in from Cologne specifically to see New Order who according to our new German friends 'never come to Germany'.

From there, the next run of songs is close to perfect. All the idiosyncrasies, fragilities and temperamental equipment of 1980s New Order are long gone- this is a fully fleshed out, massive sounding hits machine with backing projections, smoke and lasers. Regret. Age Of Consent. Ceremony with Gillian switching from keys to guitar. Isolation, a Joy Division song containing one of Ian Curtis' darkest lyrics set to urgent, pummeling electronic post- punk. Then, slowing things down slightly, Your Silent Face. They play a couple of recent songs (Be A Rebel, the song with the most un- New Order song title ever) and then a superb, sky- scraping Sub- culture, 1985's Lowlife song/ single, the instant hit of the keyboard line, Stephen's drums and Bernard's words about 'walking in the park when it gets late at night' and having to submit filling Wythenshawe's space completely. 

Sub- culture

Bizarre Love Triangle (possibly their greatest single) seguing into Vanishing Point (possibly their greatest album track) and True Faith (again, possibly their greatest single). Blue Monday. Temptation (possibly... oh you know). It's all about the songs and the feelings they provoke. 

The encore is a Joy Division mini- set, Ian's face projected onto the screen behind them, the presence that is always hovering somewhere around the band. Atmosphere. Transmission. Love Will Tear Us Apart. 

Transmission (Live at Les Bains Douche, December 1979)

They've come a very long way since crawling out of the wreckage of Joy Division, from their faltering debut as New Order at The Beach Club in Withy Grove to this massive gig at Wythenshawe Park. They've made groundbreaking records, done it their own way, survived record company collapses, bankruptcy, the demolition of nightclubs, deaths, break ups and fall outs. Tony Wilson once said that Joy Division/ New Order were 'the last true story in rock 'n' roll'. It felt that way on Saturday night in a way, more than just a big gig, a band and an audience who have grown up together, whose songs mean so much to each other and who had come home. 

Monday's Long Song

Arthur Russell's In The Light Of A Miracle is exactly what I need to start an August bank holiday, thirteen minutes of giddy, expansive, New York avant- disco/ proto- house, a song unreleased in Arthur's lifetime but first seeing the light of day via Phillip Glass in 1993. Dream music. 

In The Light Of A Miracle

Back in May JD Twitch of Optimo was invited to play at The Barbican at an event celebrating the life of Arthur Russell and launching a book, Travels Over Feeling by Richard King. Appropriately enough, JD opted to play a set consisting of nothing but Arthur Russell records. That set, an hour and thirteen minutes long, went up on Soundcloud a week ago and it's a thing of beauty and wonder- Arthur's space age, New York cosmic disco music, those spectral melodies and his floaty voice over crisp drums, percussion and all that s-p-a-c-e that Arthur built into the production of his songs. You can listen here. 

This, as a bonus, is Instrumentals Volume 1 (Part 1) from 1975, five minutes of cellos and sax, percussion and drums.

Instrumentals Volume 1 (Part 1)

Daniel Avery And The Early Bird

No forty minute Sunday mix from me today- I've been away this week and haven't had much time. Instead, enjoy this sublime two hours from Daniel Avery and The Early Bird Show at NTS from last week. Daniel plays an early morning selection of songs and tracks, joining the dots between ambient, indie, trip hop and techno, with PJ Harvey, some of his own music, Sinead O'Connor, Two Lone Swordsmen, Holden Federico, George Clanton, James K, Deftones, Death In Vegas, Everything But The Girl, Skee Mask, Smashing Pumpkins, Interpol, Solvent, and Nulifer Yanya all making appearances. The full tracklist is here and you can listen here. Two hours well spent. 

I've posted two different Daniel Avery mixes previously. Both are still available to download. In November 2022 I put together a forty minute mix of remixes Daniel has done of other artists- it's quite intense and thumpy. 

Forty Minutes Of Daniel Avery Remixes 

• Enfant Sauvage: 58500 (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Saint Etienne: Fonteyn (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Leaving Laurel: Winter In The Woods (Daniel Avery Remix)
• David Holmes: Hope Is The Last Thing To Die (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Mandy, Indiana: Alien 3 (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Joshua James: Amber Rush (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Confidence Man: Feels Like A Different Thing (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Daniel Avery: Lone Swordsman (Chris Carter Remix)

Previous to that, in February 2022 when I started this Sunday mix series, the second forty minute mix I posted was a Daniel Avery one, thirty minutes of echo, reverb, FX and emotive ambient/ techno.

Half An Hour Of Daniel Avery

• Together In Static
• Illusion Of Time (Teodor Wolgers rework)
• Petrol Blue
• Lone Swordsman (Chris Carter Remix)
• Into The Voice Of Stillness
• A Story In E5
• Midnight Sun
• Lone Swordsman

V. A. Saturday

In 1991 Creation records began issuing a series of five volumes of early and deleted Creation singles dating right back to the label's first release, CRE01 by The Legend. The compilations were called Creation Soup and were also put out as a box set, Creation Soup: Volumes One To Five (The First Fifty Singles). All the 80s Creation names are present and correct- Biff Bang Pow, The Jasmine Minks, The Pastels, The Loft, The Bodines, Primal Scream, Meat Whiplash, Felt, The Weather Prophets, Slaughter Joe, Nikki Sudden, The House Of Love et al. 

On Volume One a message from Alan McGee read, 'This record is part of an overall series of releases documenting the now deleted early Creation singles. The first twenty came in hand folded sleeves which Joe Foster and I used to stay up and fold all night four or five times a week. This series is meant for the obsessive Creationist. Now it's all available again... stop writing us your letters! -The President, January 1991" and another, "Creation Records acknowledges the following: Dan Treacy, Joseph Foster, Edward Ball, Bobby Gillespie, Jeff Barrett, Jerry Thackeray, The Living Room bands and clientele and absolutely no one else.

The desire to give the Creation fans who missed out in the mid- 80s what they wanted was one reason for the albums' existence. In David Cavanagh's account of the label, My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize, he says that the five various artist compilations were as much about generating cash flow as anything, money coming in to pay debts at a time when both Primal Scream and My Bloody Valentine were in the studio, MBV particularly racking up bills while attempting to realise Kevin Shields' dream. Creation was constantly hard up- Screamadelica, Bandwagon- esque and Loveless would all be out by the end of '91. The cash rich days of Oasis were a few years away. But no matter, the music contained within the five volumes of Creation Soup is reason enough for their existence. These two songs by Pete Astor are shining examples of why Creation had a back catalogue worth re- issuing. 

The Loft's Up The Hill And Down The Slope is a 1985 indie- pop classic, all jangly guitars, trebly and Pete Astor's vocals, pleading for a spin around the fair. It appears on Creation Soup Volume Two. 

Up The Hill And Down The Slope

The Loft split up on stage in 1985. Pete Astor then formed The Weather Prophets whose single Almost Prayed is as good as any anyone on Creation wrote and released, a genuine peak. It was a 1986 single and then on Creation Soup Volume Three.

Almost Prayed

A Bird Of No Address

Oh my. Mercury Rev have returned with some songs ahead of a new album, Born Horses, next month. This song is the third so far, and was released two weeks ago, A Bird Of No Address, a song that is both huge and universal while also sounding personal and inward looking. There are sweeping orchestral strings, flourishes of baroque sound, piano and timpani, and Jonathan Donahue's part sung, part whispered, part gasped vocals spinning truths and tales. Magical, spellbinding modern psychedelia. 

Celebrated Summer

The end of August is a real transitional period, the dog days of summer almost done, the August bank holiday marking an ending (and being the last bank holiday of the year before the dread C word comes around again), the threat of September and autumn close enough to feel- September is biggest calendar change marker apart from 1st January, the switch from one time to another, the return to school, the resumption of normality after the days of high summer. 

There's a melancholy to August that Bob Mould mounted and framed back in 1984 with what could be the standout song from an album not short of great moments, Husker Du's New Day Rising. Celebrated Summer opens with a distorted, ringing guitar riff. Grant and Greg come in and the three piece power into the song, rapid fire guitar chords and thumping drums, Husker's mix of melodies and punk. But then it breaks down, and Bob switches to a 12 string acoustic, suddenly closer to the microphone, tender and rueful. They smash back into the electric guitar and thundering rhythms but the cat's out of the bag, the energy of the hardcore scene now spliced with something else. After another minute of riffing and soloing, Bob at his mid- 80s best, the 12 string acoustic comes back for the ending, Bob asking, 'was that your celebrated summer?'

Celebrated Summer

The Flightpath Estate And The Crescents

You might remember that earlier this year me and my friends in The Flightpath Estate put out an album, Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1. What started as a pub conversation between a handful of us became a reality and a slew of artists, musicians and producers connected to Andrew Weatherall or members of the Flightpath Estate Facebook group donated a track each to us, to release as a compilation album which we put out on Golden Lion Sounds. 

Various jaw dropping things happened around and following its release; we sold 500 copies in a day in February and decided to do a second pressing which also sold out; Lauren Laverne made it her Compilation of The Week on 6 Music and played three tracks from it; Piccadilly Records gave over their whole shop window to it and thirty six copies of Rusty's beautiful sleeve art adorned the shop's front window for a few hours. 

The music on the album was first rate, everyone giving us great tracks- we had a previously unreleased Two Lone Swordsmen track, The Crescents, and brand new tracks by Sons Of Slough, Timothy J. Fairplay, Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s, Richard Sen, Rude Audio, 10:40, Hardway Bros, The Light Brigade (I think everyone knows by now that this is David Holmes) and a cover of Smokebelch by Andy Bell. Matt Hum from The Golden Lion stitched the ten tracks from the album into one mix before the album came out which you can listen to here if you don't have a physical copy of the album. 

One of the things were were really sure about from the start was that any monies raised and left over after costs had been dealt with would go to charity. There are four chosen charities connected to Andrew- Crisis, Amnesty International, The Multiple Sclerosis Society, and The Thrombosis Society. Last week the final tying up of loose ends was dealt with and we found that we had raised a net total of £5928, which split four ways saw each charity receive a donation of £1482. I wrote a piece for Crisis which they published at their website (although embarrassingly there's a word missing from my text near the end-  the penultimate line reads 'Thank you to everyone involved- all the artists, Waka, Gig and Matt at The Golden Lion, Rusty for the artwork, everyone who shared news about it online and bought into the (and bought a copy) of the album and mainly to Andrew Weatherall for being the inspiration' but should read 'bought into the idea (and bought a copy) of the album...'. Proof reading your own text is difficult eh?).

We've been blown away at every step along the way with the album- obviously we're really pleased to have raised such an amount of money for charity. And now that we've tied up all the loose ends with Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1 we can start thinking about a follow up, Volume 2...

The Crescents is the opening the track on our album, a three minute piece of ambient music by Andrew and Keith Tenniswood that originally only saw the light of day on a compilation of musical odds and ends called Still My World that was put together in 2003, a promotional CD for the Italian fashion house Zegna in Japan. Martin had a copy of this (quite rare) CD. We all loved The Crescents and chanced our arm contacting Rotters Golf Club and asking if we could license it for our album. Still My World has been released on vinyl this year as part of Record Shop Day, in a brand new sleeve with a lovely piece of writing by Keith about how he and Andrew worked in the studio. 

Still My World has since been released digitally and there's a continuous mix too, the ten tracks sequenced together with no gaps. Two of the tracks on Still My World, And Then The Walls Fell and Compulsion, were previously released as a 7" single on Andrew's Hidden Library imprint, Hidden Library 002 (both titled Untitled on that release). The remaining eight tracks were all new to Still My World. Thirty six minutes of magic from TLS world.  

I Can't Tell You Where We're Going

On Saturday there's a big gig taking place in Wythenshawe Park, a venue not very far from me at all. I keep swearing off big, outdoor, festival style gigs and then finding myself eating my words. The gig on Saturday is headlined by New Order. My first gig post- Covid was New Order at Heaton Park. I loved it. New Order are now an efficient hits machine with everything that entails. I would love it if Peter Hook was still the bass player. I would love it if they were they were still the temperamental mid- 80s band with unreliable equipment who refused to do encores but those days are gone, we are all much older and seeing New Order play Temptation and True Faith in a field not far from home. Yes, it's very tempting. See you there.

True Faith (12" Remix)

To make it even more tempting New Order are supported by Johnny Marr. Johnny grew up literally across the road from the park, it's as close to home for him as it could be. I saw Johnny Marr at the Ritz a few years ago and lots of people I know have seen him since. He plays Smiths songs and Electronic songs. He's one of the good guys. Johnny is a genuine hero- he has been since the mid- 80s but there is a much closer to home reason too. Back in the early 2010s, when Isaac attended a local SEN school, the then Tory council tried to take away the bus transport service for children with special needs- in the name of austerity. Some of the parents, us included, formed a group to protest and to keep this vital home- school transport service for children and families, who really needed it. We had a protest planned outside Trafford town hall when it was due to be debated, a dark night in February. We arrived with banners and placards. Not long after we arrived a familiar figure walked out of the car park. Johnny Marr turned up to support us (his niece attended the same school as Isaac). I had a chat with Johnny and let's be honest, he can spot a fan when he sees one. When the TV cameras arrived Johnny did his bit for the local news programme. We got ourselves in position on the steps, ready to be filmed protesting. I had a chant planned. I mentioned it to Johnny. He started it off and we all joined in- and that is as close to writing a song with Johnny Marr as I have got to date. Johnny then came into the council chambers with us all and sat through proceedings. For that reason, and a million others, Johnny Marr is a bit of a hero. 

We won by the way. Fuck the Tories. 

This is a dub mix of How Soon Is Now by Dubweiser, a beautifully clunky, totally unofficial, end of the night, smoke in your eyes and flashing lights dub mix of The Smiths finest B-side.

How Soon Is Now (Dub Mix)

If Johnny Marr and New Order weren't enough inducement to head to Wythenshawe Park on the bank holiday weekend, the third act on the bill is Roisin Murphy. Back in 2021 Crooked Man remixed all of Roisin's Machine album, bending an already dancefloor fixated record into completely new shapes. Sheffield, Manchester, Ireland and Ibiza, all locked into one big loop. 

Crooked Madame

Monday's Long Song

I've been playing catch up recently with a group called Lunar Dunes- they had a track on Collen Cosmo Murphy's Balearic Breakfast 2 compilation, released in June 2023. A friend then tipped me off to two albums by them, From Above (from 2007) and Galaxsea (from 2011). They formed in West London with members coming from Cornershop, Transglobal Underground and Natacha Atlas's band, a three piece that expanded to become a six piece inspired by the cosmische sounds of West Germany in the 1960s and 70s, making music that circles around space rock, ambient, dub, global and post- jazz. 

Off World Beacon was the closing track on Galaxsea. It fades in slowly with shakers and sighs, and a guitar line picking out some sparkles. A piano joins in, the notes played high up with the right hand, all very weightless and floaty. Gradually Off World Beacon gathers pace with drums and more instruments, the guitar becoming more gnarly, a voice way off in the distance, more intensity, more space rock, on and on for over seven minutes.

Off World Beacon

Fifty Minutes Of Music Inspired By Apollo 11

A couple of nights ago I watched Apollo 11, a 2019 film about the events of July 1969, fifty five years ago this summer, when astronauts Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were fired into space on a Saturn V rocket and Armstrong and Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon. The film is a documentary using only archive footage from NASA (including previously unseen 70 mm film) without narration- the only audio comes from the films themselves, voices from ground control and the three men, sound from the mission and ending with a speech by Kennedy at the start of the 1960s. This is a ten minute preview. 

There were several pieces of dialogue between the people in ground control and the three men in a tin can hundreds of thousands of miles away in space that are instantly recognisable, partly because they've been sampled on records. I thought it might be a good theme for a Sunday mix, a collection of tracks inspired by the Apollo missions, some with samples from ground control and the three astronauts, some from other film versions and some just from the wider topic of lunar exploration. It came together quite quickly. It's no surprise probably that The Orb feature.  

Fifty Minutes Of Music Inspired By Apollo 11

• Brian Eno: Always Returning
• Brian Eno: An Ending (Ascent)
• Tranquility Bass: They Came In Peace
• Sedibus: Toi 1338b
• Ian Brown: My Star
• Meatraffle: Meatraffle On The Moon
• Meatraffle: Meatraffle On The Moon (Andrew Weatherall remix)
• The Orb: Supernova At The End Of The Universe (Earth Orbit Three)

Brian Eno's music for the 1983 album Apollo: Atmospheres And Soundtracks is rightly a legendary piece of ambient music, the soundtrack to a film called For All Mankind, an Al Reinhart documentary about the Apollo missions which didn't see the light of day until 1989. Eno, his brother Roger and Daniel Lanois created an album of heavenly, stargazing sounds, synths, piano and pedal steel. Always returning and An Ending (Ascent) bookend the film's soundtrack- both a gorgeous.  

They Came In Peace is a 1991 single by Tranquility Bass, an American duo of Michael Kandel (who I've just noticed I share a birthday with, and who sadly died in 2015) and Tom Chasteen. It's one of 1991's best 12" singles, opening with crickets and the gentle hiss of percussion. The vocal sample, 'they came in peace, for all mankind', is Neil Armstrong on the moon, reading from the plaque left on the moon that reads in full, 'Here men from the planet earth first set foot upon the moon July 1969, AD. We came in peace for all mankind'. The bass loop is one that I could happily listen to for hours, crickets chirruping away around it. Andrew Weatherall later sampled the bass loop for his Squire Black Dove remix of One Dove's Breakdown. Fun fact; I was given Andrew's copy of this 12" last year by Sherman at AW60, blue vinyl with a sticker on the plain black sleeve noting the BPMs of the four tracks in Andrew's handwriting. 

Sedibus is the recent project of Alex Paterson and Andy Falconer, an Orb offshoot (Andy was a collaborator back on the early Orb albums). Space exploration, the cosmos and the moon programmes are all over The Orb and Sedibus. This year's second Sedibus album is about the search for extra- terrestrial life, SETI. The first album, The Heavens, came out in 2021 and this track has a vocal sample intoning the word Sputnik, the USSR's satellite that preceded the US moon programme. Toi 1338b is a planet int eh Pictor constellation, discovered in 2019 by a seventeen year old student on an internship at Goddard Space Flight Centre. Toi 1338b is eleven times the size of earth 1301 light years away from us.

My Star was Ian Brown's return to music after the breakup of The Stone Roses and for me remains his best solo single. NASA samples are an integral part of the song, along with a throbbing bassline and twinkling guitar line and Ian's lyrics about space exploration, nuclear stations, military missions and astronauts being the new conquistadors. The vocal sample 'You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue, we're breathing again, thank the lord', is in Apollo 11, ground control shitting bricks as the command module re- enters earth's atmosphere and drops into the ocean. My Star came out in January 1998 ahead of the album Unfinished Monkey Business.

Meatraffle's Meatraffle On The Moon came out in 2019, a fantastic dub- inflected song imagining un- unionised workers stuck in dead end jobs on the moon, with the weekly meatraffle and karaoke sessions in the lunar base social area their only joy. 'They are so sick of this they just wanna be by the sea', they sing and sound utterly defeated by it. The song is on Meatraffle's second album, the highly recommended Bastard Music. Andrew Weatherall's remix is a nine minute bass- led dub monster that spins the poor moon workers woes out into the cosmos. 

The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld is an ambient house touchstone, their 1991 debut album and tour de force. NASA samples appear all over it, not least in the back to back twenty five minutes of tracks Supernova At The End Of The Universe (Earth Orbit Three) and Back Side Of The Moon (Lunar Orbit Four). I picked the former, which has samples of Saturn V blasting off, various flight control to lunar module communications, and one from Dr Strangelove Or How I Stopped Worrying And Learned To Love The Bomb. 

V.A. Saturday

Back in 2017 the Dutch label Safe Trip released a compilation called Welcome To Paradise Vol. 1: Italian Dream House, 1989- 93. Across four sides of vinyl there are eleven perfect slices of dance music from Italy. The names may not be household ones- Don Pablo's Animals are probably the best known, the rest are anonymous Italian producers such as Dreamatic, Jacy, Open Spaces, K2, Deep Choice, Agua Re, Night Communication, Key Tronics Ensmeble and High Tide. It is a perfect example of the VA compilation, conjuring the sound of nightclubs, of Rimini, Sorento and Tuscany, the hot Italian sun, boating shoes, tans and Vespas. The tunes are sumptuous and euphoric, the production airy, the drum programming just so, the chord sequences rise gently, everything in a rich, sweet spot where there no troubles or worries, just endless summer. It's a lovely place to visit.

Any of the tracks from Vol. 1 (or from either of the two follow ups) will give you an idea of what is found within the double album's grooves. This one, Last Rhythm by Last Rhythm, is as good as any. 

Last Rhythm (Ambient Mix)

Last Rhythm were Leandro Papa, Luca Belladonna and Roberto Tesei. Their self- titled track was originally released in 1990, a 12" with three mixes. According to Discogs there have been twenty nine different releases/ versions/ pressings and re- pressings since 1990 across a variety of labels. Last Rhythm contains a much used sample, a chattering/ chirruping sound, a tropical bird who's just inhaled helium maybe, an aural indicator of rainforests. It turns up in Sueno Latino's self titled, Ibizan dancefloor smash (a track based on Manuel Gottsching's E2- E4) and in 808 State's Pacific among many others (you can read the full story of that sample here).   

Come Now Grateful People

Some amped up modern guitar music to bring the week to a close from The Jonny Halifax Invocation. Thank You came out a month ago and will rattle your windows and shake your brain. Two and a half minutes of fuzzed up, high octane, politicised, anti- monarchical, everything into the red, rock 'n' roll/ screaming blues. 

In Jonny Halifax's own words, he is 'a primitivist free blues outsider, sonic shaman of the acid fuzzed lap steel guitar, demented blower of the haunted harmonica of doom'. There are singles and EPs to listen to and buy here. It's not all at that pace and volume- on The Mountain Dub, Jonny gets seriously dubbed out and lost in the swamp.

Please Don't Put A Price On My Soul

One of our evenings in Fuerteventura we were sitting round on the patio, playing cards, drinking some wine and watching it go dark. Eliza said she didn't know any Bob Dylan. I started playing some through my phone, starting with Tangled Up In Blue, a song I never get tired of, Dylan zig- zagging his way through his real or imaginary past with enough killer lines to write several films around. From there I picked my around some late 60s and 70s songs, eventually arriving at this one...

Dear Landlord

There is something  about Dear Landlord (from 1968's John Wesley Harding) that is unfathomable, so rich and mysterious it's completely unknowable. Dylan plays piano and sings while Charlie McCoy and Kenny Buttrey (bass and drums respectively) follow him (but lead at the same time). The playing is simple and melodic and mesmeric- Dylan's musicianship isn't seen as his biggest talent but his piano playing on Dear Landlord is superb. Lyrically, there is debate that the landlord is God or maybe Albert Grossman or perhaps a totally abstract landlord. Who knows? It doesn't matter. 

Dylan's 70s are a mish mash but much better than his 80s. Planet Waves and Desire are both good with several stand out songs. Blood On The Tracks is rightly legendary. New Morning has its moments, definitely. Self Portrait a few gems in the among the WTF? songs. On social media Davy H, the man who used to write the much missed Ghost Of Electricity blog recommended this to me, from 1978's Street Legal, late 70s apocalyptic, south of the border, Old West, Biblical, mythic country rock, a song I've overlooked before

Senor (Tales Of Yankee Power)

 

Ritual

Jon Hopkins is back  with a new album at the end of the month, a forty one minute long electronic symphony called Ritual, divided into eight parts. His ambient/ meditation/ found sound double album, Music For Psychedelic Therapy, was a highlight of 2021 for me and this feels like the flipside, a physical counterpoint- noise and rhythms, layers of synth, sub- bass and thumping drums. 

This is Ritual (Palace), the second piece on the album, six minutes of light, sweet, gently building electronic music, music that makes you feel like you're connected to something bigger- an ongoing theme in Hopkins' music (see also Everything's Connected for one). 

Sequenced later on is Ritual (Evocation), something much more intense and visceral, the physical tension palpable and engulfing, waves of sound building, threatening to collapse but never quite breaking until well past the five and a half minute mark. 

The album is available in all the usual places including Bandcamp. The use of the word journey to describe electronic music is an overused one but in Ritual's case it feels very appropriate. 

Fade Into You

Betancuria is the oldest town on Fuerteventura, a small town in the mid- west of the island. We hired a car and drove to it, picking our way up mountain roads and through some very small towns on the way. The town was founded in 1404 by a Norman knight, Jean de Bethencourt. The central square has an old church, the church of Santa Maria de la Concepcion and a short walk away there's a new museum which houses all kinds of archaeological finds from the island's much older past- ceramics, rocks with carvings and markings, necklaces, and skeletons. It must have been a heck of place to survive in lithic times. There seems to be some question about who the first Fuerteventurans were and whether they came from Morocco or were transplanted there by the Romans. 

There are several small cafes and bistros in Betancuria. The population of the town is less than a thousand, so there's no doubt that the restaurants and cafes exist mainly for the tourists. We chose one, entered and were seated in a shaded corner, cactus and plants overhanging us, a cat with kittens on top of a wall, a man setting up his guitar and microphone for some Saturday afternoon musical accompaniment. 

While browsing the menu I started singing along (quietly, semi- absent mindedly) to the song being played over the cafe's sound system and realised suddenly that it was a Spanish cover version of Mazzy Star's 1993 song Fade Into You. It sounded perfect, one of those moments where time stops for a little while. Those chords, Hope's vocal phrasings, the slide guitar...

Fade Into You

I have had a look around on YouTube and there are several Spanish language cover versions. I'm not sure if this is the one that was playing in the cafe but I like it anyway. It's by Flores De Uranio. 

Monday's Long Song

The Paris Olympics has been a joy from start to finish. The opening ceremony was a surreal delight, the rain lashed streets and river Seine, Olympic athletes on boats headed by the refugee team, and a party on a bridge with a man dressed as Dionysus accompanied by drag queens which upset all the right people. 

Highlights for me included: the cycling road race through the streets of Paris, crowds packed into the streets of Montmartre and winner Remco Evenepoel stopping on the finish line, a minute ahead of the chasers, dismounting and celebrating framed by the Eiffel Tower; the speed climbing with competitors racing up climbing walls to hit the button at the top in under seven seconds; the appearance of a fifty one year old, Andy McDonald, in the skateboarding; the men's hundred metres final where all eight runners crossed the line within a second of each other; Pidcock's gold in the mountain biking; the madness and excitement of the track cycling at the velodrome, and Emma Finucane's trio of medals; the breakdancing; Snoop Dogg; and you'd have to have a heart of stone not to find joy in Simone Biles and the gymnastics. 

When the games were held in London on 2012 we sat down to watch the opening ceremony and I joked that the organisers should play Olympians by Fuck Buttons, a ten minute collision of noise, frenetic rhythms and ecstatic melody produced by Andrew Weatherall (a production job he likened to hod- carrying, so physical was the noise the three of them created on what became the album Tarot Sport). Later on that evening, the sound of Olympians boomed out of the speakers at the stadium along with among other tracks Underworld's Rez. Well played Danny Boyle. 

Olympians

Forty Five Minutes of Sonic Youth

One of the evenings out in Fuerteventura, while pottering around, having a drink and getting ready to go out for tea, I had a sudden urge to hear Teenage Riot by Sonic Youth. One of the wonders of the internet age and mobile phones is that almost any song is only a few seconds and clicks away and within a few seconds the sound of Sonic Youth's 1988 masterpiece, the New York band's imagining of an alternative USA with Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis as President, was filling our hotel room. From there a worked my way through a few of my favourite SY songs, some of which I've pulled together into a forty five minute mix here. This could easily have been twice the length- or a part two could appear at some point. It focusses mainly on their 80s and early 90s output, the Sonic Youth of my youth- and their singles mainly too, not too many deep cuts. There's lots of 21st century Sonic Youth that's worth investigating and maybe I'll come back to it. 

Forty Five Minutes of Sonic Youth

• Teenage Riot
• Youth Against Fascism
• Computer Age
• Kotton Krown
• Death Valley '69
• Kool Thing
• Bull In The Heather
• Sugar Cane
• Dirty Boots

Teenage Riot is from 1988's Daydream Nation, a standard setting 1988 double album, an album which felt like the culmination of something, everything coming together. I could have included half the songs from it on this mix- Silver Rocket, Eric's Trip, Candle, Hey Joni... all indie- punk songs blending the art, noise and alternate tunings with  verse/ chorus melodies. Teenage Riot- one of the songs of the 80s.

Youth Against Fascism- how apt eh? A 1992 single and song from Dirty, the album from the same year, and one that shows the band engaging with politics, twelve years into Republican presidencies in the USA, Kim Gordon's bass a constant grinding menace, Thurston and Lee's guitars distorted and buzzing and Minor Threat/ Fugazi's Ian MacKaye guesting and doubling up on vocals. Sugar Cane is from the same album, the video filmed at a New York fashion show which had a Marc Jacobs grunge collection. It is also Chloe Sevigny's first appearance on film.

Computer Age is a cover of a Neil Young song, one from Neil's mind blowing 1982 album Trans. Sonic Youth take a song with vocoders and keyboards and reverse it into Neil's Crazy Horse backyard, a squealing lesson on how to do a cover version. Their covers of Within You Without You, Electricity and Superstar and as Ciccone Youth, Addicted To Love and Into The Groove are all similarly good. Computer Age was one of several highpoints on The Bridge, a 1989 Neil Young tribute album that also featured Pixies, Psychic TV, The Flaming Lips, Loop, Nick Cave, and Dinosaur Jr. 

Kotton Krown is from Sister, their album from 1987, an album loosely based around the writings of Philip K. Dick. Sister is one of the art rock/ noise milestones of the 80s. Kotton Krown is a blur of dreamy psychedelic noise.

Death Valley '69 is on 1985's Bad Moon Rising, written by Thurston who duets with Lydia Lunch, screwdrivers rammed into the necks of guitars, The Stooges summoned up, along with Charles Manson and the Spahn Ranch.

Kool Thing is from 1990's Goo, the first album released after singing to a major label, one of the album's standout songs. Kim wrote it after an uncomfortable interview with LL Cool J, two people coming out of New York music with very different perspectives. 'Are you gonna liberate is girls from male white corporate oppression?', she asks. Public Enemy's Chuck D responds. 

Bull In The Heather is from 1994's Experimental Jet Set, Trash And No Star, produced by Butch Vig. Kim wrote it with a viewpoint of seeing passiveness as a form of rebellion- 'I'm not going to participate in your male- dominated culture, I'm just going to be passive', she said of the lyrics. By 1994 Sonic Youth were big business in the indie/ alt- rock/ fashion/ video/ MTV worlds. Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna stars in the video. 

Dirty Boots is from Goo, the opening song and one that features every SY hallmark- tunings, noise, distortion, drawled vocals, building to a massive release several minutes in when the chorus finally hits, 'I got some dirty boots!'

V.A. Saturday

There are several Factory Records various artist compilations worth writing about in this series- the 1991 box set Palatine is the motherlode, there are several post- bankruptcy compilations, a very good compilation of Be Music productions (the name used by members of New Order for productions done outside the group, often done along with ACR's Don Johnson) and the very first Factory release, Fac 2, was a four track various artists sampler called A Factory Sample. I'll probably deal with all of them before the year is over. For today though, I offer you a Factory compilation from 1987, released on Factory US (catalogue number FACT US 17), a ten track compilation for the American listener from a time when New Order were making some serious inroads into touring the USA but just before Factory and the Hacienda went supernova. In typical Factory fashion, this Factory compilation, has no New Order on it, their biggest act missing. It is also titled Young Popular And Sexy- the least Factory sounding title on any Factory album. Wilson must have been having a laugh at someone's expense (and if it was at someone's financial expense it was probably New Order's). 

Young Popular And Sexy has ten tracks/ songs by ten Factory artists that the label must have hoped might make some headway into the US, maybe via college radio. Happy Mondays kick off side one with the chaotic, lysergic indie- funk of Kuff Dam (Mad Fuck spelt backwards) followed by the beautiful guitar playing of Vini Reilly on Durutti Column's Our Lady Of The Morning. Factory's mid- 80s line up of artists that hardly sold a record anywhere outside the Manchester postcode areas then follows- Stanton Miranda, Stockholm Monsters,  Shark Vegas (the band formed by Factory's man in Berlin Mark Reeder), The Railway Children (from Wigan, signed to Virgin and didn't really hit the heights expected of them. The drummer from The Railway Children sold my wife her first car back in the 1990s), The Wake, Kalima, and Miaow. A Certain Ratio are also present with And Then She Smiles, a pop song from 1986's Force album that should have been massive- ACR also left for a major label within a year or two, an experience that they didn't find particularly fulfilling either.

Here's some songs from it. Stockholm Monster's were from Burnage, just up the road from where I grew up. This single came out in 1987, the same year the group broke up, a swirling, dense, off kilter song with lyrics attacking politicians and those who tow the party line. 

Partyline (Partylive Mix)

Miaow was Cath Carroll's band. They signed to Factory and released two singles in '87- When It All Comes Down and Break The Code. When It All Comes Down closes Young Popular  And Sexy, sparkling indie guitar pop, and would have sounded great blaring out of mid- 80s ghetto blasters. Cath Carroll went onto release a solo album on Factory, 1991's England Made Me, a lost gem. In fact, Young Popular And Sexy is stuffed full of lost gems. 

When It All Comes Down

It's a curious compilation, a Factory curio, but one that despite being a little uneven is a good snapshot of the label, its approach and its artists, songs which should have been much more widely heard than they were. I don't know how many copies it sold in the US or whether it turned a generation of young Americans onto the wider Factory catalogue. I suspect not. 

As a bonus this is Happy Mondays performing Kuff Dam live at Manchester's Free Trade Hall in November 1989, by which time they were arguably and briefly the best live band in the country- there was definitely no- one else like them.

All You Children

There are a clutch of albums lined up for release in late summer and autumn that all sound like contenders for 2024's end of year lists- Jamie Xx's will be among them, the album In Waves will see the light  of day in September. The latest single from it came out at the end of July, a collaboration with The Avalanches called All You Children, and it is a massive sample- loaded bag of summer fun...

'All you children gather round/ We will dance/ We will whirl', a woman's voice intones as the synths, drums and keys go off all around, 'All you children gather round/ We will dance together'. The sample apparently comes from The Sabbath Dress by Hanny Nehmias, a typically Avalanches sounding sample. Back in 2020 Jamie and The Avalanches worked together on Wherever You Go from the sprawling double Avalanches album We Will Always Love You. This is next level though, a loved up grin turned into bouncing, mesmeric sound. 

Island Life

Hola. We got back from Fuerteventura in the middle of the night on Tuesday and spent yesterday in a daze of sleepiness, washing, needing a food shop, catching up with some Olympic action (which mainly we could see with either Spanish or German commentary over on Fuerteventura) and despair at what's happening in the UK at the moment (which obviously we had been tracking via phones while away). Hearing about other people's holidays is usually pretty boring so I won't go into too much detail here but you will find a lot of Fuerteventura photographs accompanying posts over the next few weeks. 

Fuerteventura is the Canary island nearest to Morocco, a volcanic rock in the Atlantic with year round sunshine, temperatures at this time of year in the high 20s/ low 30s and a constant breeze/ wind, that makes it possible to move around and do things without it feeling stupidly hot. We had a great time, our hotel was lovely and we spent many hours either poolside or on the beach. We hired a car and drove through the mountains into the centre of the island which was very memorable, the landscape completely desert like, and went to Betancuria, the oldest town on Fuerteventura. It was a much needed change of pace. I did spend part of the final day there wondering how we could stay for much much longer but, sooner or later, you have to come home don't you?

Easing myself back into the music and the blogging here are some tracks with islands and Spanish in their titles. 

First, ninety seconds of calming ambient bliss from Seahawks, followed by some longer, floaty ambient sounds from Future Sound Of London. 

Islands

Floating Islands (Yage Mix)

Now, AR Kane and a Spanish quay, from their 1988 album 69, a bewildering but beautiful mix of dream pop, FX and guitar pedals, noise and psychedelia. 

Spanish Quay

And finally, Slowdive and some dramatic Spanish shoegaze from 1994. 

Spanish Air

If you run those four together, in that order, you'll have an accidental but lovely way to start your day.