When You're Gone

In 1989 a Byrds tribute album called Time Between was released. There were a flurry of these tribute albums, indie and leftfield rock 'n' roll bands recording covers of Neil Young, The Byrds, the Velvet Underground and Jimi Hendrix songs, with mixed results. The Neil Young tribute album, The Bridge, is uniformly superb- the others less so, but still, each one has its moments. On Time Between Dinosaur Jr stepped up and covered The Byrds I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better.

I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better

J Mascis' drawl and guitar playing were tailor made for some Byrds action, taking the song at double speed and the backing vox/ lead vox interplay sounds wonderfully half arsed, like the trio just stumbled out of bed, switched on their amps and played. 

The 1965 original, a Gene Clark song, is out of this world, the Rickenbacker jangle, harmonies and element of doubt in the chorus line, 'probably', putting it right near the pinnacle of Byrds songs and any songs from 1965. Incredibly, I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better was a B-side (to All I Really Want To Do). And equally incredibly, it is sixty years old next June. 

I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better

Lights On The Way

Ripley Johnson has three bands as going concerns- Wooden Shjips (a four piece psyche rock outfit), Moon Duo (a three piece kraut/ kosmische ensemble) and Rose City Band (a cosmic country duo). I'll happily listen to any and all of these. Ripley's guitar playing and song writing are second to none. 

Next year there's a new Rose City Band album, Sol Y Sombra, and ahead of it there is Lights On The Way, a gorgeous four and a half minutes of cosmic boogie/ kosmische Americana, chilled out guitar riffs, four four drums and Ripley's stoned vocals. There's some lovely, wigged out organ too, to keep it moving up and out. 

This is Dawn Patrol from the previous Rose City Band album, 2021's Earth Trip, a languid, spaced out, nine minute, six string serenade. Earth Trip was an album Ripley made after the being locked down in 2020/21, staying at home for an extended period for the first time in years and appreciating the simple pleasures- being outside, walks at sunset, the wide open spaces of the west coast of the USA, living with nature's rhythms. 

Dawn Patrol

Dancing With Shadows

Causeway are Marshall Watson and Allison Rae, an Idaho based duo who have got an EP out next month on Chris Massey's Sprechen label (a Manchester label which operates straight outta Stretford, just up the road from here). Allison sang on Chris' The Thief Of Time album last year, and after a few releases on Italians Do It Better Causeway have made their way to Sprechen for this EP and a forthcoming album. The EP features the song Dancing  With Shadows, a huge piece of 80s synth- pop/ goth- dance action, that pulses and throbs like some fusion of New Order, The Cure and Depeche Mode, the soundtrack to a nightclub scene in a 1986 film that went straight to VHS but now looks like a lost classic. 'Tonight I'm dancing with shadows', Alison sings, 'To the beat of my heart'.  

As well as the single the EP comes with four remixes- Marshall's Club Mix is available to listen to now at Bandcamp, an amped up, ramped up, wall of synths remix. Bagging Area favourites Hardway Bros are there too as is Kiaki, and Chris Massey has done his own remix, the 303 deployed to maximum effect, a mid- tempo synth acid/ techno chugger with rubber band bass, Detroit to Stretford via Idaho. 

Monday's Long Song

Back to work after a week off today. The darkness of November looming. 

This was sent to me recently by my friend Spencer, a reliable source of weird, wonderful and cosmic tunes. It's six minutes forty nine seconds long so qualifies for the Monday slot and came out on DFA in 2017, Futur Parlez by Essaie Pas. Spencer described it as having 'smacky Blade Runner vibes with a spoken word French vocal', to which I replied, 'what's not to like?' I'd like to add that the church organ sound coupled with ominous synths is electrifying, and there's a snare at five minutes twenty that is nerve shreddingly perfect. A supercharged, French speaking Vangelis experience. 

The video is no less persuasive, fire, traffic, night into early morning, a city falling apart, people who've been up all night stumbling round, glitchy graphics, close ups of robotic faces....

Essaie Pas ('Don't try') are from Montreal, a wife and husband duo of Marie Davidson and Pierre Guerineau. In the text that accompanies the song at Bandcamp Marie and Pierre say that the track was built around Philip K Dick's A Scanner Darkly and the future world Dick imagined of 'surveillance and drone cameras,  abstract digital landscapes, and facial recognition software'. 

The Return Of The Sabres Of Paradise

There was a flurry of excitement in the middle of last week, not to mention some 'I didn't expect to see that happening' style comments, when the line up for Primavera 2025 was announced (Primavera is an annual festival held in Barcelona). Tucked away with little fanfare in the list of artists on the right hand side of the poster is the name The Sabres Of Paradise.

Jagz Kooner soon confirmed via social media that it was indeed correct, The Sabres Of Paradise are reforming as a live act. A year ago next week me and my friends in The Flightpath Estate held an evening at The Golden Lion in Todmorden to mark the 30th anniversary of the release of Sabresonic, the first Sabres Of Paradise album. We had Jagz and Gary Burns fielding questions (by me!) and talking at length about their time as Sabres with Andrew Weatherall, how they met Andrew, how Sabres worked, what reocrding sessions were like, who did what, how remixes were done, all the fine detail that a small but committed audience wanted. After the Q&A was over we played Rob Fletcher's recording of Sabres playing live at Herbal Tea Party in Manchester in 1994, the only live recording of the group in existence. Jagz stood by the speaker listening and nodding. 'We sounded pretty good', he said. Later on Jagz DJed and he was still around when Red Snapper played the following night. At some point over the weekend Jagz told me and a few others that he was thinking about getting Sabres back together as a live band, do some gigs, draw a line under the Sabres story, and do it respectfully, in Andrew's memory. He also swore us to secrecy. 

The live band version of Sabres played twenty two gigs in 1994, a few one offs starting in London, then Sugar Sweet in Belfast, Sabresonic, Megadog and a tour in May 1994, Herbal in December 1994 and then a tour supporting Primal Scream (and then a few in Japan). Andrew was on stage with the band for the first few gigs but stepped down after the Belfast gig, saying that he felt like a fraud standing behind a keyboard. He much preferred to stand in the crowd and watch the band play the songs he, Jagz and Gary wrote, with Weatherall DJ sets before and after. 

The revived Sabres Of Paradise will be very much the musicians who played those gigs in 1994. That live band line up was Jagz and Gary, Rich Thair on drums, Phil Mossman on guitar (who would later join LCD Soundsystem) and Nick Abnett on bass. Nick established a key part of the visual identity of Sabres on stage, bass slung low, cropped hair and long leather trenchcoat. Jagz has got this line up back together and next June Primavera Sound will be graced at some point with the resurrection of Sabres Of Paradise as a live band. Jagz recently found the original sampler that he used when Sabres played live. He switched it on and it still holds within its memory banks the stems to some of those Sabres Of Paradise songs including Smokebelch and Edge 6. 

Clearly, Sabres aren't going to get together and rehearse just for one gig- I think I'm allowed to say that a UK tour is very much on the cards, as are gigs elsewhere. 

In celebration I thought a Sabres Of Paradise Sunday mix was the order of the day. I've deliberately avoided the big hitters, the tunes we all want to hear played live, and gone for some deep cuts, remixes and B-sides, the smokey, murky, dark and dubby Sabres Of Paradise.

Forty Five Minutes Of The Sabres Of Paradise

• Haunted Dancehall (Performed By In The Nursery)
• One Day (Endorphin Mix)
• Lik Wid Nit Wit
• Tow Truck (Depth Charge Mix)
• Theme III
• Jacob Street 7am
• Ysaebud
• Mother India (Sabres At Dawn Mix)

In The Nursery are from Sheffield, twin brothers who have been making music since 1981 and under a different name, Les Jumeaux, they contributed to Smokebelch. Sabres recorded and released Haunted Dancehall in 1994, their second album and the one Jagz considers to be the 'proper' Sabres album (as it was recorded as an album rather than a collection of already completed but unconnected tracks which is how Sabresonic came together). Remixes were commissioned and a remix EP Versus came out on CD with the remixes spread across 7", 10" and 12" on vinyl with versions by In The Nursery, LFO, Depth Charge, The Chemical Brothers, and Nightmares On Wax. In The Nursery took the title track and did their own version. This track had a bizarre second life when it as chosen by the BBC to be the style of music that would be played in the event of the death of the Queen and was played by Radio 1 when Diana was killed in a car crash in August 1997. Depth Charge was J Saul Kane, who made some fantastic sample laden hip hop// trip hop in the 90s and whose music has not to my knowledge been used to soundtrack the deaths of any members of the royal family. 

Sabres remixed Bjork's One Day (from her debut solo album Debut, one of 1993's best records) and the three remixes were released twice, once as Bjork Cut By The Sabres Of Paradise (two versions) and once as a Bjork remix album (titled The Best Remixes From The Album Debut For All The People Who Don't Buy White Labels) along with remixes by Underworld and Black Dog. As was the Sabres practice at the time, the three men would do a remix, then another, then another, changing tempos upwards and pushing things further. The three remixes of One Day are the beautiful slow and chilled Endorphin Mix, the Springs Eternal Mix and the Adrenaline Mix (of Come To Me). 

Lik Wid Nit Wit is a dub techno track that could be Sabres at the best, seven minutes of Andrew's vision and Jagz and Gary's playing- rim shots (that could be Gary banging a drum stick against a scaffolding pipe at Orinoco Studios), melodica, the dull thud of the 909, dub bass, the unmistakeable Weatherall '93 sound. It was played on Andrew's 1993 Essential Mix and appeared on a CD only compilation (Volume) before being re- released by A Sagittarian in 2018. Lik Wid Nit Wit also seems to be the genesis of another pair of Sabres tracks, giving birth in one way or another to both RSD and Wilmot.

Theme III was on the Theme CD single, a metallic dub of the hip hop title track. Theme 4 was on Haunted Dancehall. Theme II turned up on Select Magazine's free cassette Secret Tracks. 

Jacob Street 7am is from Haunted Dancehall, part of the run of three tracks that conclude the album and that form a psychedelic/ ambient endgame to the record and to Nicky McGuire's tour through London's grimy underbelly, as described in noir style in the sleevenotes by one James Woodbourne (actually Andrew).

Ysaebud was released as a one sided 7" single on Andrew's Special Emissions label in 1997, credited to S.O.P. From The Vaults. Easydub. The vocal sample, 'Ever since I was a youth/ I've always been searching for the truth', is from The Truth Theme by The Truth. Killer Sabres dub. 

Mother India was by Fun- Da- Mental, released in 1995 with two Sabres remixes, Sabres At Dawn and Sabres At Dusk. Each remix sounds exactly like the FDM track being redone at that time of day in the title. 

V.A. Saturday

Bob Stanley (of Saint Etienne) is no stranger to the various artist compilation- sometimes it seems he's a one man compilation machine, firing out niche and obscure VA albums into the void to be picked up by the curious and adventurous. In 2020 along with Jason Wood he compiled a sixteen song album called Cafe Exil (New Adventures In European Music, 1972- 1980) that came out on Ace Records (themselves a deep and rich gold mine for compilation albums). Cafe Exil was the soundtrack for a new Mittel Europa, devoid of Anglo- American influence, the songs that could have been playing as David Bowie and Iggy Pop took their morning coffee in Cafe Exil in Kreuzberg, West Berlin (I love the fact that when Bowie and Iggy decided to leave the USA to kick cocaine they headed to one of the most extreme places in the world, half a city hemmed in by a wall and surrounded by a paranoid dictatorship). 

The motorik and the kosmische feature heavily as you'd expect- Cluster, Faust, Amon Duul, Popol Vuh- along with other sympathetic names- Soft Machine, Brian Eno, Toni Esposito, Annette Peacock- and some outliers- Jan Hammer Group. These two are among the stand outs. There's never a bad time to hear Michael Rother playing guitar is there?

Feuerland

Feuerland is originally from Rother's Flammende Herzen, a 1977 solo album that holds its own in the Rother back catalogue (and sounds as central to '77 as any of Bowie and Iggy's Berlin albums). Conny Plank produces, Jaki Liebezeit plays drums, Rother the synths and guitars. 

This one is by Steve Hillage, from his album Motivation Radio, also from '77, instrumental psychedelia/ prog. Iggy and Bowie would have been tapping their teaspoons along while this was playing in Cafe Exil, strong black coffee and pastries helping flush their systems clean. 

Octave Doctors

Ringmakers And Repulsion

More new music to end the week, a pair of releases coming from different ends of the sonic scale but both providing a bit of a hit to the senses. 

First, a new EP from the multi- talented Matt Gunn, The Ringmakers Of Saturn, out today on Tici Taci. The lead track has electronics and guitar side by side, and blast off at one minute ten seconds, thumping bass, synths and FX and crunchy drums, cosmic disco heading out to the sixth planet. There are remixes- the Simon Sheldon and Monkton Version cuts straight to the chase, whooshes and pulsing bassline with that sci fi guitar line cutting through, dropping into a delicious dub halfway in. Tici Taci boss Duncan Gray provides the second remix, Dunc's All Action Edit, wobbly bass, ripples of sound and perpetual motion. 

The second burst of new music today comes from Leicester's Echolocation, a band who have been ploughing their furrow for over twenty years, a guitar/ drums/ bass/ brass/ synths/ spoken word band who possess a distinctive sound and singular view of the modern world that can be found on several albums and EPs. Their latest is called Repulsion, a four track EP. Opening song meta AF lulls you gently with tingles but then guitars clang in and vocalist Pete threatens, ' We're coming for ya/ We're gonna call you out'. The UK Of The A is slower but no less urgent, fuzz guitar and bass and the voice in the distance warning about echo chambers and doubt. The drums kick in and the tempo ramps up. Attention Grab cuts the menace slightly, organ/ keys at the fore while the nine minute title track has Harvey's ringing guitar line take the lead while the drums and bass rattling away and there's more unease and tension in the words, 'try to fit in... are you a team player?'. A wall of buzzing guitar crashes forwards and then drops back again, the band forging on, Pete still free associating, 'tolerance, forgiveness, compassion... repulsion'. 

You can get Repulsion and the rest of Echolocation's back catalogue at Bandcamp.  

This Is A Story...

Out in east Manchester the city turns into a series of small towns nestled into the Pennines. In one of those towns, Ashton- under- Lyne, there is an industrial museum at Portland Basin, the meeting point of two canals and some restored industrial buildings. In part of the museum there is a section on local bands and venues, all long gone, and this poster advertising a Rolling Stones gig from 1963. Oddly, the venue, Baths Hall in Urmston is miles away at the western edge of Manchester, a couple of miles from where I live. Baths Hall is also long gone, demolished in the 1970s. The Stones have outlived it by decades. The poster was saved by a member of the support act, The Meteors, who were from Hyde, an east Manchester town not far from Portland Basin (and not the '80s psychobilly band of the same name) and is part of a display about The Meteors.  

The Rolling Stones played all over the country in 1963/ 4. I've written before about them playing in Leek, Staffordshire, a post that linked Joe Strummer's song At The Border, Guy (which has Joe calling out, 'at Leek town hall, Leek town hall tonight') and Half Man Half Biscuit's magnum opus The Light At The End Of The Tunnel (Is The Light Of An Oncoming Train). The song has lines about several Pennine and Staffordshire towns- New Mills, Matlock, Eyam, and Leek. I know Leek because it was where my Dad was born and grew up and we spent many Saturdays in the 1970s going over there to see my grandmother. Any musical references to it are therefore of interest. The last time we were in Leek, last year, we had a sandwich at The Foxlowe Arts Centre, which I noted was putting gigs on and I see that Leek will shortly host a gig by Jah Wobble so things are definitely happening in small town Staffordshire. At my original Leek post someone left a comment saying The Rolling Stones played Leek in 1963, and added 'I know this because I bought the pies'. 

The early Rolling Stones were very much the band of Brian Jones. In the summer I found these photographs from the last photo session of the band with Brian as a Stone, nattily turned out in velvet suit and snakeskin boots, taken in May 1969. 

Brian was a mess by this point and had been for some time- drink, drugs, paranoia, estrangement within the band. The third of the three photos is telling- they seem to be waving goodbye to Brian, Mick especially. The writing was on the wall when Andrew Loog Oldham put Jagger and Richards in a room five years earlier and told them they couldn't come out until they'd written a song. Brian was a blues obsessive whose guitar is all over their early songs and he could play any instrument he picked up. The mid- 60s Stones are drenched in Brian's playing- harmonica, piano, organ, harpsichord, mellotron, sitar- and his white teardrop Vox guitar. Tensions between Brian on the one side and Mick and Keith on the other led to his sacking from the band he started, in June 1969, replaced by Mick Taylor. Loog Oldham contributed to the wedge that was driven between them, as did Brian's own behaviour. Footage from the sessions that became Sympathy For The Devil show him in a poor light, only dimly aware of what's going on around him, nodding off while strumming. 

Many people who knew him said he could be two different people, one sweet, intelligent, shy but friendly, the other cruel, preening, difficult and insecure. In 1969 Brian took a trip to Morocco in his Rolls Royce with his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg and Keith along for the ride. This became another straw added onto the camel's back that became Brian's sacking. He became violent towards Anita and Keith stepped in. Keith and Anita came home as a couple, and Keith portrayed himself as Anita's saviour ever after. Brian's declining abilities to turn up to sessions, play guitar when he was there and his various legal difficulties (drug busts, visa issues planned tours of the USA) made Mick and Keith's decision easier. Keith and Mick took control of The Rolling Stones musically, managerially and commercially in the mid/ late 60s and removed Brian when he was no longer any use to them- or the brand. 

In an interview around the time of the publication of his autobiography Life, Keith was asked which of the people from the '60s who died young he'd bring back if he could, Keith gave a response- I can't remember who, maybe John Lennon or Jimi Hendrix. The interviewer then asked him, 'what about Brian Jones?'. 'Nah', Keef chuckled, 'he was a cunt, leave him dead'. Mick and Keith have controlled the narrative ever since Brian's ejection from the band. Brian's use of drink and drugs undoubtedly made his problems worse. Charlie Watts said Brian did everything to excess and that he wasn't strong enough to take it. In July 1969 Brian was found dead in his swimming pool aged twenty seven. The Stones paid tribute to him at their free gig at Hyde Park, Jagger dramatically reading a Shelley poem and then they released hundreds of white butterflies (most of which died within minutes). In the weeks before his death Alexis Korner had visited Brian at his cottage and they talked about putting a band together. Brian is said to have spoken to others about this including John Lennon, Alan Price, Mitch Mitchell and Jimmy Miller. He demoed some songs apparently. 

It's fairly easy to imagine a different life for Brian, if he'd been pulled out of the pool in time to save his life. A blues band with Mitch Mitchell and Alexis Korner releasing an album in 1970. Some time getting himself sorted out, making a clean break from the Stones. Maybe an album in the mid- 70s with Steve Marriott and/ or Ronnie Lane. He could easily have added some '60s flash to T- Rex although Brian and Marc would surely have been combustible and bad for each other. Maybe as the '70s ticked over into the '80s Brian would have flounced into Billy's in Soho and been adopted by the New Romantics, a single with Steve Strange, a bit part in a Bowie video, a top ten synth- pop single. Maybe by the mid 80s Brian Jones could have made a single with Psychic TV, rather than being the subject of one.

Godstar

From Psychic TV it's a short step to Shoom, Brian lost on the dancefloor at Southwark fitness centre, then making a 12" anonymously with Richard Norris maybe or a one off single like this one by ex- Frankie Goes To Hollywood man Paul Rutherford... 

Get Real

As Stones tours became bigger and louder it's easy to imagine Brian being brought on from the wings at some stadium somewhere and barrelling his way through Let's Spend The Night Together or taking the lead on Paint It Black. Then, in the 90s an elder statesman, acoustic album with Rick Rubin. 

Let's Spend The Night Together

He was a troubled soul and a flawed human being. He probably needed some help that people weren't set up to give him at the time. He pops up now and again in popular culture- this year on their album Glasgow Kisses, The Jesus And Mary Chain paid tribute, 'I've been rolling with The Stones/ Mick and Keith and Brian Jones...'

The Eagles And The Beatles

That last photo session also gave up these shots which became the sleeve art for the second Rolling Stones compilation, Through The Past Darkly, released in September 1969 two months after Brian's death with the gatefold containing an epitaph to Brian- 'When you see this, remember me and bear me in your mind. Let all the world say what they may, speak of me as you find'. 

We Care Because You Do

We Care Because You Do by The ÁST Project came out two Fridays ago, a twenty four track compilation put together by Mark Darby of Mighty Force and Gabriel Mendes. It is an ode to friendship, connections, the love of music and Árni Grétar. 

At the album's Bandcamp page, the text reads as follows; 'Árni Grétar, also known as Futuregrapher, has been a beacon of light and dedication to his craft, channeling it through the most captivating forms of electronica while bringing together a stellar community of like-minded flair from around the planet. His boundless drive is an inspiration to many. 2024 has proven to be a transformative and challenging year for our dear friend, yet the fire of his labels, personal productions, and collaborations has never dimmed. Through this music, we wish mostly to express our friendship and gratitude to Árni for all the magic he consistently brings into the world. All proceeds from this compilation will go directly to Árni to help with unexpected expenses in the times ahead'. 

The twenty four tracks contained within the album are of the highest quality, a perfect example of how electronic machine music can be innovative, emotive and  utterly absorbing. Some of the names are familiar to these pages- Fluffy Inside, Solipsism, Paddy Thorne and Myoptik have all featured previously as releases on Mighty Force. You can click play on track one, Dreamer by Augen, and let the album unfold, or dip in and out- either approach will reward. Dreamer is a seven minute ambient/ techno excursion, glassy synths and drones, the sound of Arctic forests and frozen lakes with some kind of thaw coming halfway through, the thump of low end and a pulse, light in the darkness. 

I could pick any of the remaining twenty three tracks almost at random- ambience, techno, electronica, braindance are abundant. Silentwave's Miraihe is all melodic bleeps underpinned by the hiss of a drum machine, repetitious and beautiful, especially when the synth strings fade in.

The final track is A Juno by D York, twelve minutes of shimmering synths, waves of drone and padding synth sounds, music that is as much about feeling as chords and notes. It is sublime. There's another mix of it, A Juno (The Gloaming Mix) here at a name your own price offer. 

The album We Care Because You Do by The ÁST Project is at Bandcamp, available as download or on CD.  At The ÁST Project's Bandcamp page there is also a poem by Magnús Sigurðsson...

Hugarfljótið
hefur skolað mér
á þurrt.

Úr kallfæri.

Undir nýjum
himni.

Og ég sái

í nýjan
akur.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A flood of thoughts
has washed me
ashore.

Out of earshot.

Beneath a new
sky.

And now I plant

in an untouched
field.

~~~

Vatnaskil (Watershed) by Magnús Sigurðsson,
from the book "Tími kaldra mána" (Cold Moons), Uppheimar, 2013.

Psychedelic Invocations

I've been spending quite a bit of time with albums from the 00s recently, partly in response to a series running over at No Badger Required where this week sees the culmination of a six week countdown to find the best albums of the 00s. My rediscovery of Mercury Rev's All Is Dream came from a different place but that album featured at the lower ends of the No Badger Required chart (a chart voted on by the luminaries of the Musical Jury) and I've been digging into different bits of Nick Cave's back catalogue ahead of the upcoming concert at Manchester Arena in early November. 

Two weeks ago I posted Heathen Child, a Grinderman single from 2010, from the second Grinderman album, Grinderman 2. Heathen Child came with an Andrew Weatherall remix and also as Super Heathen Child, a different take with Robert Fripp playing guitar. I noticed that Nick and The Bad Seeds have been playing Palaces Of Montezuma as they've been touring Europe for the last month and pulled Grinderman 2 out from the CDs and played it in the car going to and from work for a week. Grinderman was a Bad Seeds offshoot, a place for Nick to escape the 'heaviness' of the Bad Seeds and play around. Three Bad Seeds joined him- Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey and Jim Sclavunos. Nick often played guitar in Grinderman which shifted things it seems, away from being the vocalist or the man at the piano and repositioning Grinderman as a guitar band. I didn't see them live but friends who did said that the gigs were as frenetic and lively as any they'd seen. Nick also saw Grinderman as a place to do something else lyrically. There's a lot of middle aged man sex in Grinderman, like the filter has been deliberately removed and what pours out of the id and onto the paper is what you're going to get. On the first Grinderman album there was No Pussy Blues. On the second, there was Worm Tamer, the Grinderman junkyard blues and nerve shredding rattle with Nick's lines about the Female who he describes as 'the snake charmer... the worm tamer... the serpent wrangler... the mambo rider', all tongue in cheek and overtly lascivious, a dead pan Carry On Nick Cave, concluding with 'My baby calls me the Loch Ness Monster/ Two great big humps and I'm gone'. 

Worm Tamer

Much of Grinderman 2 comes from a similar place, noise and confusion, aging bones and feral desires. Apart from the penultimate song, the wonderful, achingly romantic, three chord swoon of Palaces Of Montezuma. On this song, as the A, E and B chords roll round and the three Bad Seed/ Grindermen provide backing ooh oohs, Nick lists a series of gifts he wants to present to his lover- Mata Hari, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Miles Davis, the black unicorn, and memorably 'the custard coloured super- dream of Ali McGraw and Steve McQueen' and 'the spinal cord of JFK wrapped in Marilyn Monroe's negligee'. He wants nothing in return, just a breath, and everything hangs together in the chorus, 'Come on baby come in out of the cold/ Gimme gimme gimme your precious love/ For me to hold'. 

Palaces Of Montezuma

It's a song that feels like it takes as long to listen to as it did to write, three chords, some backing vocals and a list, but its utterly wonderful, one of his best songs. It also feels like maybe it was the song that prompted Nick back to the Bad Seeds. Two years later came Push The Sky Away, a Bad Seeds album that felt like a corner turned, a different Bad Seeds, the album of Higgs Bosun Blues and Jubilee Street. Palaces Of Montezuma feels like the bridge between Grinderman and a route back to the Bad Seeds. 

The Bad Seeds album that came between the Grinderman debut and Gridnerman 2 was Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!, from 2008, an album that features inside the No Badger Required 00s countdown top ten. It's a classic Bad Seeds album, the last one to feature Mick Harvey and one that Nick said would be partly informed by the guitar sound of Grinderman. Blixa Bargeld had left previously and with Mick Harvey going the Bad Seeds were mutating into a different group. 'I didn't get into rock 'n' roll to play rock and roll', Blixa said when he left. Ouch.

Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is full of guitar rock songs, a cast of characters in the songs and the spirit of New York, the rattle and thrum of the Velvets, the sidewalk and the Lower East Side, seem to be strewn throughout it along with a hundred biblical allusions. There are some top ten Bad Seeds songs on Lazarus- the supper club groove of More News From Nowhere, the scattergun frenzy of We Call Upon The Author, the title track and this one, the second song, which launches itself into Lou Reed with the refrain 'We're gonna have a real cool time tonight!', a song about Little Janie (Sweet Jane?), who has the jawbone of an ass down the waistband of her jeans and is in a tussle with Mr. Sandman. It's a song that sounds like it could have come from the Grindermen as much as The Bad Seeds.

Today's Lesson

Monday's Long Song

The reactivation of acid house/ electronic band Fluke has been one of 2024's most pleasant surprises. In April they released a single called Insanely Beautiful, which came with various versions including a rather smart Hardway Bros Meets Monkton remix. Now, October, they've suddenly dropped a second release from a forthcoming album, another song with a nominative deterministic title- Real Magnificent. In order to qualify for the Monday long song rule #1* I'm leading with a remix, the eight minutes forty four seconds of, yes, real magnificence that is the sLEdger Remix...

The sLEdger Remix opens with wobbly synth patterns and Jon Fugler's vocal speaking of 'magic in the air' and 'hope unlooked for came so suddenly'. At two minutes there's a stutter and the drums kick in, synth chords ascend ominously, Leah Cleaver's voice on top of it all, and more star chasing, throbbing cosmic disco fun. There are other versions- a sLEdger Dub, the JC Remix, and the hyperactive, multi- layered All Buttons In version by Fluke themselves.

The original version of Real Magnificent is also available, a slightly trimmer four minutes forty nine but no less impressive, sleek, sci fi progressive house/ cosmic disco, the twin vocals swirling around the drums, synths and keys, insistent and expansive. 

You can get Real Magnificent and all the various mixes and remixes at Bandcamp. sLEdger released a single on Tici Taci at the start of the year, the mirror ball disco throb of Popper which I wrote about here. Otherwise known as Robin Dallison, sLEdger's Bandcamp page is here, packed with goodies to listen to/ download. 

* Monday's long song rule #1 is that a song must be over six minutes forty nine seconds long.

Forty Minutes Of Fontaines D.C.

Fontaines D.C. had an album out in August, their fourth, a record called Romance. It's the sound of a five piece guitar band about to go massive. They sounded a little bit jaded on 2022's Skinty Fia I thought but Romance is the band firing on all cylinders, expanding and playing around. The band said that a wider range of influences were brought to the table for Romance- hip hop, Massive Attack, Deftones, Alice In Chains, various films including Akira and Wings of Desire, the Beat poets, Dylan Thomas and on final song Favourite, Johnny Marr's c1986 Smiths guitar sound. It's a really good record and judging by the live appearances I've seen on TV they're on fire at gigs too. A friend went to an early evening album launch gig in Liverpool  and said they were superb. 

They've got themselves a memorable look as well. Vocalist/ lyricist Grian is wearing a black skirt/ kilt and big boots and the rets are mixing up vests, tattoos, green or red dyed hair, bug eye sunglasses, neon green and yellow jackets, massive platform trainers. In the guitar indie rock world the easiest/ classic look is to go fringes, skinny jeans and leather jackets, channel the Velvet Underground and the 1960s or the post punk early 80s. I like the fact they're playing around with their image, a look that is most definitely not classic or canonical and which likely makes little sense to anyone under the age of thirty.

Four albums, various remixes, a Grian Chatten solo album, a Nick Drake cover- it seemed the time was right for a Sunday mix. 

Forty Minutes Of Fontaines D.C.

• 'Cello Song
• I Was Not Born
• A Hero's Death
• A Hero's Death (Soulwax Remix)
• Here's The Thing
• Televised Mind (Dave Clarke Remix)
• Favourite
• Romance
• All Of The People

'Cello Song is a cover of a Nick Drake song from a tribute album last year, The Endless Coloured Ways. Nick's original version is my favourite Nick Drake song. Fontaines D.C. do what any good cover should- respects the original but tramples all over it too. Fontaines  version is a real beauty, a rockabilly drumbeat, grungy guitars and Grian's Dublin drawl re- interpreting nick's fragile lyrics. The words have taken on a new meaning for me since Isaac's death- I've written about them before- especially these lines...

'But while the earth sinks to its grave
You sail to the sky
On the crest of a wave

So forget this cruel world
Where I belong
I'll just sit and wait
And sing my song
And if one day you should see me in the crowd
Lend a hand and lift me
To your place in the cloud'

I Was Not Born is from A Hero's Death, the second FDC album, from 2020. It's a blast of Dublin storytelling and street poetry, twin post punk guitars, Grian declaiming 'I was not born/ Into this world/ To do another man's bidding...' Electrifying stuff. 

A Hero's Death is from the same album (obviously), a calling card and the song that really turned my head to the band. The guitars pile in, chords slashing like a beefed up Last Nite by The Strokes, and Grian's words are a series of pieces of advice, a list, punctuated by the refrain, 'life ain't always empty'. 'Don't get stuck in the past', Grian says, 'Say your favourite things at mass/ Tell your mother you love her/ Go out of your way for others' and rattles through all sorts of killer lines before concluding 'If we give ourselves to every breath/ We're all in the running for a hero's death'. Two ears ago, listening to this in the car, with thoughts of Isaac's death on my mind, this song reduced me to tears. Powerful stuff.

The Soulwax remix came out on 12", the Belgian duo spinning Fontaines D.C.  from Dublin to the Balearics. I played this out once in a bar and a young bloke came up to me, enthusing about it and asking if it was Fontaines.

Here's The Thing is from this year's album Romance, the words written following  an argument between Grian and guitarist Carlos O' Connell. The guitars are superb, distorted and crunchy. Favourite ends the record. Romance starts it. I included them both here and switched them around. 'Maybe Romance is a place for you and me' Grian finishes the title track with. Here the line segues into All of The People.

Televised Mind is from A Hero's Death and is here in remixed form by techno don Dave Clarke, a enthralling, synth squiggle, bottom end heavy remix that shoves Fontaines into new places. 

All Of The People is from Grain Chatten's solo album Chaos For The Fly, released last year, a record that showed there was life beyond FDC with electronics, acoustic guitars and strings and a sombre, melancholic feel. 

V.A. Saturday

Last Saturday's various artists compilation was a well Balearic album on Copenhagen's Music For Dreams label with tracks selected by Manchester DJ Richard Moonboots. In 2019 the series of VA albums by following Moonboots' Moments In Time with an album of songs chosen by Growing Bin's Basso, a compilation called Proper Sunburn- Forgotten Sunscreen Applied By Basso, thirteen songs that are so Music For Dreams, so far down that chilled, pina colada, sun terrace Balearics sound that when you slip the CD in the player you're instantly transported far away from rainy Manchester (insert your own rainy town name here) and out into the balmy heat and surroundings of the Mediterranean. Across the thirteen songs on Proper Sunburn there are Spanish guitars, birdsong, soft padded drums, dubby bass, sweet vocals, synths, excursions into jazzy pop and gentle grooves. This one is by Ghia, a song that chugs along very nicely topped by a softly sung vocal, a breakup song that makes heartache sound almost aspirational. 

You Won't Sleep On My Pillow

Please note Bagging Area does not advocate lying in the sun without sunscreen. Skin damage is skin damage. Wear a hat and re- apply often. Yes, I burned in Fuertevenura this summer. 

That's Amazing Grace

This is new from Dot Allison and Anton Newcombe, Dot's always entrancing, breathless voice floating over, around and within an acoustic guitar and psychedelic FX blur from the Brian Jonestown Massacre main man, combining as All Seeing Dolls. That's Amazing Grace sounds and feels like a dream that you haven't quite woken up from, that moment when you're stirring and half aware of the fuzzy dreamscape that you're inhabiting. There's an album to follow in February 2025. 

Big Dreams

I wasn't aware I needed the sound of an Australian pub rock/ punk band but when I clicked play on Big Dreams by Amyl And The Sniffers last week I realised that it was exactly what I needed.

This is a slow burning, ragged, three minute, modern punk torch song, a psyche guitar riff, single notes picked out with a touch of distortion, Amy's twenty cigarettes a day voice, and drums crashing in at one minute forty. 'Never been a dull one/ Always been a big star', she sings/ rasps, a tale of small town frustration, trouble making ends meet, dreams of escape and wish fulfillment- 'Just take a breath and get out of here'. The sort of punk rock ballad that's relatable at both seventeen and fifty seven. 

The video is obviously cool as fuck. Motorbikes, the desert, a certain disdain for the camera from Amy when she turns to look at it. I'd always been aware of Amyl And The Sniffers, kept seeing their name and photos and links to songs, but never really clicked through or investigated further. It turns out I'm a fan. Their new album, Cartoon Darkness (their third), is out at the end of next week. 

Fly To Ceiling

Out a week ago and somewhat unexpectedly, this is a new track from Tricky, Adrian Thaws, in cahoots with Parisienne producer Mike Theis as Theis Thaws, with a David Holmes remix to boot. This being Tricky there is claustrophobia and paranoia as standard. Holmes doesn't extend the timing out much, a short remix by recent standards, but toughens the beats and pushes the bass forward, the sounds wrapped around Tricky's whispered rhymes and Rosa Rocca- Serre's backing vocals. You can listen/ buy the original and Holmes remix at Bandcamp. There's an album to follow at the end of the month, Fifteen Days. 

Put Your Money In My Box

Acid Klaus played The Golden Lion, Todmorden, on Friday night, a launch party for a five track EP P.T.S.D. By Proxy that came out on Golden Lion Sounds last month, with a DJ set afterwards by Maxine Peake. Acid Klaus came on stage under the Lion's mirror ball and red lights to a busy and excitable crowd, the pub filled with people young and middle aged determined to have a party from the moment the first note was played. The recent EP was played in full, Adrian with hat pulled right down and collar of coat pulled right up and dark glasses too, on keys/ synth and vocoder, a poncho'd and behatted stand up drummer and twin vocalists who gave it all, Cat Rin stage left, singing in Welsh and English and Amelia Lace, centre stage, wearing a helmet. They powered their way through the songs from P.T.S.D. By Proxy, from the revved up synth pop call for revolution The Solution, to the Detroit techno sounds of Aerodromes, Amelia singing of cruising the council estates and having to get it right. Pour Some Wood On The Fire mixes Hi NRG and blurry acid house with Adrian on robotic vocals, and then abandoning the synth completely, leaving the stage and entering the heaving throng on the floor with microphone firmly clenched for Losing Our Way, his north Manchester vowels and the 303 ricocheting round the stone floor and walls. Adrian says the EP is 'dance music you can cry to', electronic sounds to frug around to while the world goes up in smoke. The last song is a riot, the twin vocalists chanting 'put your money in my box' while Adrian counters with the robotic 'heaven's for sale' and the crowd dance like no one's watching. Or cares about anyone who is. 

The EP is still available at Golden Lion Sounds, 10" on yellow vinyl. If you buy the vinyl you get a digital only remix of Aerodromes by David Holmes with a video filmed in the Golden Lion

Maxine Peake played records afterwards, the self described 'leftie luvvie' spinning Northern Soul 7" singles and floor fillers, psyche, indie, guitar bands, Motorhead and more. I had to run for the 11.36 train back to Manchester and found myself sitting on the train with a group of twenty- somethings who, on finding out I teach history for a living, asked me to tell them some history. There followed a long, rambling and probably incoherent monologue about the Spanish Civil War with multiple digressions. If you're reading this kids, thanks for humouring me/ looking after me. 

Monday's Long Song

Another aurora borealis photo, a bit out of focus but I like the chimney pots in the corner. Today's long song is from 1991 and The Orb and the fifteen minute epic that closes the first half of the Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld album. 

Spanish Castles In Space (Lunar Orbit Five)

Much of the work that went into Ultraworld came from Alex Paterson and Jimmy Cauty's DJ sets at Paul Oaknefold's Land Of Oz nights at Heaven in London, the long layered multitrack sets with three decks and tape and CD players all linked up, BBC Radiophonic Workshop albums, dub records, sound effects records, NASA samples, very few drums and whatever else they could get their hands on. 

Spanish Castles In Space samples the love theme from Spartacus by Bill Evans, the narration from a Soviet Union field recordings album called Звуковые И Биоэлектрические Сигналы Рыб (Audio And Bioelectrical Signals Of Fishes apparently), and Crystal City by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Glynis Jones. It is a long, chilled and very worthwhile trip. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Jah Wobble

Like much of the rest of the country I was outside on Thursday night taking in the spectacle of the northern lights. To the naked eye not much more than a faint flicker but when seen through a camera on night setting giving us a dazzling display of the aurora borealis. This photo was taken from our loft window by my daughter Eliza and is better than any of the ones I took. 

Today's mix has a similar cosmic vibe, seven songs from the bass playing legend Jah Wobble. His back catalogue is so wide and deep that it would take several mixes to pay justice to Wobble's music so this is just a selection of post- PiL Jah Wobble tunes with an emphasis, as always in Wobble land, on the dubbier end of things. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Jah Wobble

• Angels
• King Of The Faeries (Avengers Outer Space Chug Dub)
• Visions Of You (Pick 'n' Mix 1)
• Higher Than The Sun (A Dub Symphony In Two Parts)
• Post Lockdown Dub
• Inspector Out Of Space
• Everyman's An Island

Angles is from Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart 1994 album Take Me To God, an album with twelve different vocalists, the voice on Angels belonging to the Senegalese singer Baaba Maal, the song underpinned by one of those lovely fat dub basslines that only Wobble can conjure. 

King Of The Faeries is by Dub Trees, a Martin Glover/ Youth project with Wobble and Daniel Romar in 2016 with some loop and beats consultancy by Andrew Weatherall and Nina Walsh. The Dub Trees album is an excellent collision of dub and folk with a pagan angle. 

Andrew Weatherall is also present on the 1992 remix of Visions Of You, a single from 1991's Invaders Of The Heart Rising Above Bedlam album. Visions Of You was the first time Andrew worked with Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns, a partnership which would lead to Sabres Of Paradise. On the 12" there are three AW remixes of Visions Of You, Pick 'n' Mix 1 and 2 and then The Secret Love Child Of Hank And Johnny, twenty five minutes of dubbed out excellence with the beautiful voice of Sinead O'Connor. Everyman's An Island is also from Rising Above Bedlam. 

More Weatherall! This time from Primal Scream's Screamadelica. In an interview for the Classic Albums series Andrew describes sitting in the producer's chair and realising what this version of Higher Than The Sun needed, reaching for the phone with the words, 'Get me Jah Wobble'.

During lockdown Jah released a series of tracks onto Bandcamp, recorded at his home in Stockport (I know! How did Jah Wobble end up in Stockport right?!). Post Lockdown Dub is self explanatory. 

In May 2020 Youth and Jah Wobble released an album called Acid Punk Dub Apocalypse, a selection of dub songs with various singers- Hollie Cook, Rhiannon, Aurora Dawn, Durga McBroom- plus appearances from Richard Dudanski, Roger Eno, Nik Turner and some of the beats and programming courtesy of Mr Weatherall and Nina Walsh. 

V.A. Saturday

In 2017 Copenhagen's Music For Dreams label asked Mancunian/ Balearic DJ Richard Moonboots to compile an album for them, to pick out some little known gems and chilled tunes that could soundtrack moments of calm and contemplation-  moments that could come sitting at a beach bar in the Canaries or at somewhere more urban/ suburban, Ancoats or Chorlton say. We're definitely into autumn now. This week the leaves have begun to change their colour from the greens of summer to the reds, rusts, oranges and yellows of October and November. Moonboots' compilation, Moments In Time, sounds like summer and foreign shores in places but also carries the chill breeze of autumn. Bombay Hotel's Between Leaves for instance, or this one by Matt Deighton...

Tannis Root

There's a circling, fingerpicked acoustic guitar part, some wonderfully deep cello, and a woodwind instrument (a clarinet probably) picking out a meandering lead, all beautifully mellow and woody, and yep, all pretty autumnal, and done in under three minutes. There are very much shades of Nick Drake and John Martyn present. 

Matt Deighton fronted Mother Earth in the 90s, who were on Acid Jazz. He played in Paul Weller's band in the late 90s and briefly deputised for Noel Gallagher when he walked out of Oasis for a while in 2000. His solo back catalogue is much wider than that brief summary though and his albums and songs are steeped in a 60s and 70s folk sound but go beyond that too. I'm sure I should own more by Matt than I do. 

Coincidentally, or not, I reviewed a  various artists compilation at Ban Ban Ton Ton this week, a twenty track new release compiled by Luke Una which has a similar feel, songs for astral traveling, songs for long nights of quiet contemplation cherry picked from Luke Una's record collection. It opens with John Martyn's sublime ambient/ folk/ jazz/ field recording song Small Hours, a piece of music from 1978 that really has to be heard to be believed. And felt. You can read my review here. 

Small Hours

Nocturnal Homecoming

Stourbridge producer Dirt Bogarde has made some of my favourite electronic/ acid house tracks of the last couple of years- his tracks Heavy Blotter and Backroom Sunrise have both lit up my life and listening sounds along with several others. Earlier this year Dirt released an album called Love, Sweat And Beers, an eight track debut packed with tunes and moments and an album that is in part a love letter to his hometown and a pub, The Mitre, that played a key role in the Stourbridge music scene n the mid- to- late 80s. Get the album here, priced at £0 or pay what you want. 

Today sees the release of Come Home, another slice of tip top dark disco/ acid house, nine minutes of enthralling and pulsating synths and drum machines (and not a cover of the James song by the way). The long intro raises the tension, drums eventually kicking in at one minute forty, a mid- paced, throbbing dancefloor monster, synapse twisting toplines and after four minutes a mashed, filtered, backwards vocal that has the bass and FX wrapping themselves around it coming to a close with a lovely drawn out ending. All in all, a hypnotising and transportative way to spend ten minutes. Dirt Bogarde's Bandcamp page is here and Come Home will be there from today. 

Also out today is a new EP from Spatial Awareness, which complements Come Home nicely. I posted the previous Spatial Awareness release in the summer, Dream Food which came with a lovely dubbed out remix. The new one, Nocturne, is yet more dark electronic fun, seven minutes of the stuff, with hissing hi hats and a bouncing bassline. At a minute in, the tom toms roll in. There's a breakdown, a wait, the tension rising, and then everything thumping back in. You should be able to find it here.

As with Dream Food, there's a dub version, the Nocturne Spatial Awareness Dub which adds some space and a slightly slower tempo but keeps the intensity and dark delight in place, shifting up a gear half way in a way that might wear out patches of the carpet at house parties. 

The Dark Is Rising

I can start to feel November's presence bearing down on me. Isaac's birthday was/ is the 23rd and the anniversary of his death comes a week later on the 30th. The first November after he died, November 2022, was awful, the anniversaries coming thick and fast and then going straight into December and everything that that month brings. Last year's November was no better and in some ways maybe worse. The passing of time, one year since he died, then two, and now, in November 2024, it will be three years. In some ways it doesn't seem feasible that it can already be three years since he was last with us but time keeps marching on and he slips a little further into the past every day, getting further away in little ways all the time. Three years on I can think of him and smile now which hasn't always been the case in the time since he died- sometimes it was impossible to think of him and it not be painful so I guess that's some kind of progress- but I'm not looking forward to November and can feel it already casting a shadow. 

In September 1998 Mercury Rev released an album which completely changed their world- Deserter's Songs. Coincidentally this was just two months before Isaac was born. Deserter's Songs was the group's fourth album but it brought them success and renown they'd never had before, an album of perfectly played and sung songs that mixed end of the century fragilities and anxieties, the Catskills mountains, whispered psychedelic poetry, the old weird America that Bob Dylan and Greil Marcus talked about, and baroque chamber pop, made by a group recovering from breakdowns, addiction and break ups. It was a rebirth and is one of those albums that never seems to age or fade or lose its power and appeal. 

In 2001 Mercury Rev followed Deserter's Songs with All Is Dream, a less fragile and more confident record but one still shot through with a certain amount of dread. It opens with The Dark Is Rising, a song that sets out like a 1950s Hollywood blockbuster with huge sweeping strings and then lonely piano. Jonathan Donahue starts singing in that reedy, upper register voice about dreams and loss and bridges burned. The Dark Is Rising is about a lover who has gone but Jonathan has a kind of certainty in the song, he welcomes the darkness because he can hear them, 'somewhere in this song'. The strings and timpani crash back in and a ghostly voice wails away in the background. It's strong stuff- I recall listening to it in 2001 and being quite freaked out by it. 

The Dark Is Rising

The last verse goes like this-

'I dreamed that I was walking and the two of us were talking/ Of all life's mystery/ The words that flow between friends/ Winding streams without end/ I wanted you to see

But it can seem surprising/ When you find yourself alone
And now the dark is rising/ And a brand new moon is born

I always dreamed I'd love you/ I never dreamed I'd lose you/ In my dreams I'm always strong'

My dreams have been all over the place for a long time now, made more vivid and disturbed by the statins I've been taking for over a year now. Isaac has been appearing more and more regularly in them. After he died, when he appeared in my dreams he was always 23, the age he was when he died. Now when I dream about him he's often much younger. I don't what that means or if it means anything. I'm not sure what The Dark Is Rising means for me either but its been playing in my mind a lot as September has turned into October and November has begun to show its face. And as Jonathan sings in The Dark Is Rising, 'dreams don't last for long'. 

Noise Inject

This is the flipside to yesterday's post, the solo album In Waves from Jamie Xx and its sonic effervescence, exuberance and sheer joie de vivre. Pye Corner Audio's Martyn Jenkins operates from a much murkier place, regularly releasing single tracks onto Bandcamp that sound like postcards from a subterranean world, one where daylight rarely reaches and dark, ominous analogue synths, drones, radio static and hissing drum machines evoke some dystopic otherworld- a dark rave where everyone's dancing on their own. The latest missive from Pye Corner Audio came out last Friday- Noise Inject- and can be found at Bandcamp, a pay what you like deal. Click play/ download and let its five minutes of spectral, gloomy rave come down. I love it by the way- none of this is a criticism. 

Martyn's tracks often have highly evocative titles, names that conjure up exactly what the track is going to sound like- Mayday Acid, Rotational Squelch, Quarry Rave, Murk, Fictional Drilling, Eaten From The Inside, Five Years In The Dark, Social Dissonance and Skip Function all give you some idea of what to expect. The exception to these dystopian sounding soundtracks was the album that came out in July 2022, Let's Emerge and its single Warmth Of The Sun. Let's Emerge is a ten track vinyl/ digital album, a response to Covid, lockdowns and isolation, with Martyn writing music to capture a 'collective sigh of relief... new beginnings and a sense of hope'. Andy Bell played guitar on five of the tracks and a shared love of Spacemen 3, tremolo guitars and The Beach Boys were part of the inspiration. A few months later former- Spaceman 3 man Sonic Boom remixed three of the tracks including this one...

Warmth Of The Sun (Sonic Boom Remix)

Falling Together

Jamie Xx has been drip feeding new songs into the ether for the last four years and finally last month pulled it all together with a new album, In Waves. Baddy On The Floor with Honey Dijon, Treat Each Other Right, Life and All You Children (written and produced with The Avalanches) all preceded it, and a couple of others that have already seen the light of day have been included on a deluxe edition of In Waves- Let's Do It Again and Kill Dem. You might think that this has diluted the album, so much of it being already available. If anything it's done the opposite. In Waves has both familiar and new songs that work perfectly alongside each other and although most of the tracks seem tailor made for dancing, for being played through huge speakers in dark rooms after midnight, it works as an album, sequenced and executed adeptly. In Waves has bangers, exuberant party tunes and massive highs, but also moments of reflection and some highly charged, emotive moments of beauty. It really is very good indeed.

In Waves is packed with guests. Jamie's bandmates from The Xx turn up on the album's most melancholic song, Waited All Night. Pop star Robyn songs on Life. Panda Bear and Kelsey Lu contribute to Dafodil. Single of the summer All You Children is a giddy,  endlessly effervescent Avalanches sample fest. Jamie's production is superb, the peaks are high, the rhythms are endlessly danceable and the sounds are, in contrast to the monochrome sleeve, brightly coloured and lit up. The opening pair of Wanna and Treat Each Other Right both sound like they could have been taken straight from pirate radio. Jamie's production skills are legendary and the songs are testament to hours in the studio but at the same time, nothing sounds overworked. 

The run of tracks on side two building to the end is exhilarating, songs about the pleasures of dancing and dance music, filleting various sounds from the last three and a half decades but adding something that is completely contemporary too, completely 2024. Breather is one of the tracks without guests, a techno/ machine- made first half with a robotic female voice telling us to let go, that we deserve to be happy, to 'just surrender... erase all the worries... nothing exists... breath in and let go'. Then at three minutes forty the second half of the tune kicks in, there's a sudden shift in tempo and tone, the synths become wiggier, the drums tougher, the topline more intense, everything building in waves (yep), euphoric and strobe lit. 

Then there's All You Children which is headspinningly brilliant, more fun and more bounce than almost anything else released this year, and a one minute interlude called Every Single Weekend. and then we're into the closer, Falling Together- rapid, rattling 808 drums and the voice of Oona Doherty, whispering about the dancer, a single dot, surrounded by darkness, the tininess of the world and all the people on it, the sheer cosmic insignificance of us all. The synth chords rise and rise, pushing some emotional button that could easily tip you over that fine line between ecstasy and tears. 'Look again at that dancer', she says, 'What. The fuck? That's it. That's all there is. Us. The lonely speck in the great cosmic dark'. 

'Let go, let go, the great let go, look again at that dancer, that's you, that's us...'  

Somehow, the combination of Jamie's effortlessly brilliant music, always ascending and enveloping, and Oona's words, make this sound not just inspiring but beautiful too, profound even. The world's on fire. The planet's doomed. What to do? Dance in the face of it all, all of us, together.