Three Years

Finally it is here- 30th November. It feels it's been hanging over me for ages. November is a double punch- 23rd November is Isaac's birthday and we wait for that to arrive with everything it brings and then there's a week where we wait again, for the anniversary of his death. He died on 30th November 2021, three years ago today. The two being tied together so closely is very difficult. We've all had a very tough week with some really difficult and gruelling days where our emotions have been very close to the surface and coping with every day things- work for instance- has been really hard. After today there will be some respite I think, some relief from it all, before we're flung into Christmas. It's incredible that it's now three whole years since he went. It feels like no time at all in some ways. Time really is relative. 

Isaac died in a side room off a Covid ward in Wythenshawe Hospital, at about quarter to two in the afternoon. The three of us were with him. I can remember it all so vividly. The previous day we'd spoken to a consultant. It was a Covid ward. He'd seen, he told us, a lot of people die. I asked him how it would happen, what would physically happen to Isaac when the end came and it was pretty much exactly as he described it. Some time afterwards, a few weeks maybe, lying in bed and unable do much except drink tea and scroll aimlessly on my phone, I saw an article in one of the broadsheet newspapers with a headline that said scientists had discovered whether when we die our lives really do flash before our eyes. I didn't click through and read it but it made me think about what Isaac would have seen in those last moments. Good things I hope. 

I've said before here that the time since his death has sometimes seen him swallowed up by it. By him I mean Isaac, who he was, the person he was and became, the things he and we did together. It is the grief, the loss, the full fucking horror of your son dying aged 23, gone in less than a week, suddenly, wrenched away from us. It is the massive ball of grief, the knot of anxiety I carry round inside me. It sits inside my chest and stomach, expanding and contracting, sometimes a thing that I've learned to live with and sometimes, like this week/ month, something that engulfs me. Trying to keep sight of him when you're overcome by it is not always easy. We talk about him and smile when we mention the things he did or said, laugh about the stuff we got up to. It hurts less some of the time. And sometimes it kicks me about, makes me cry in public places, makes me feel like I'm carrying a massive weight around with me. After today it will shrink a little for a while- I think it will anyway. Today is a milestone (or millstone) to get past, another date to see the back of, another end to a few weeks that just have to be endured. November is a fucker. 

In the time since Isaac died there are songs which have changed their meaning for me. Some of them are songs that I knew really well before he died and then when listened to at some point in the days since early 2022 have shifted, the words taking on a new layer of meaning. One of those is this one by Nick Drake (who coincidentally died fifty years ago last week aged just 26, the age Isaac would have been last Saturday). 

'Cello Song

'Cello Song opens side two of Five Leaves Left, Nick Drake's debut album, released in 1969. Fast but melancholy folky, finger picked guitar, a cello and some hand drums, all recorded up close and with real immediacy by Joe Boyd. Nick songs in that whispery, very English voice. I don't know what the word are about, what Nick meant by them. They are very poetic, very literate, not really contemporary to 1969's lyrical concerns at all. There was a point when I heard the song and had been to see Isaac at the cemetery- I don't remember exactly when, summer 2022 maybe- when it became a completely new song for me, it had a new meaning for me. Halfway through the second verse Nick sings...

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

The third and final verse continues...

'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 a crowd/ Lend a hand and lift me/ To your place in the cloud'.

I don't need to unpick that do I. 

At Isaac's funeral, at the graveside, we chose this poem to be read by the celebrant- The Dead by Billy Collins...

'The dead are always looking down on us, they say,
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.

They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,

which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes'

I think something in 'Cello Song reminded me of The Dead. Both bring me some comfort. 

I've been going through Nick Cave's back catalogue too. There's lots to find in there. Playing CDs in the car while driving to and from work recently this song really struck me anew...

The Ship Song

Written way back in 1990, when I was only 20 with no idea of what was to come, this song was on The Good Son and was perhaps the first mature Nick Cave song. Piano and organ, with Nick at the fore and the three Bad Seeds (Mick Harvey, Blixa Bargeld and Barry Adamson) providing angelic backing vocals, The Ship Song is full of metaphor and is clearly a song about romantic love, doomed love maybe, love as struggle; but, as it has swelled and filled the space inside my battered Peugeot car this week in the cold dark mornings and evenings of fucking November it has given me something, I don't know what, something to hold on to. 

'Come sail your ships around me/ And burn your bridges down/ You are a little mystery to me/ Every time you come around'.

Thanks for sticking with me if you've got this far and thanks to everyone who does respond to my grief and Isaac posts. I know they're a bit heavy sometimes- I wouldn't blame anyone for not wanting to read this first thing on a Saturday morning. The comments and best wishes from the people who are part of this online community really do mean a lot. 

Onwards and upwards eh? Always onwards. Aiming upwards. 

 

It All Comes Down To This

Back in May we went to see A Certain Ratio play their then newly released  album It All Comes Down To This in full and in order followed by a hits and favourites set. We were down the front on the left, near Martin Moscrop. The gig was being filmed- during The Big E we were asked to give it our best audience singalong that we manage and I thought we sounded pretty good. The gig has just been released as a film, made by director Sebastian Faits- Divers, with the ten songs from the album in order interspersed with snippets of interview with the band and members of the audience. 

ACR stripped themselves back to a three piece for It All Comes Down To This, with producer by Dan Carey at the controls, each member mostly sticking to their main instrument, and Dan adding bits of keys, with as few overdubs as possible. As mentioned in the film (by Dave Haslam) the album is as good as any ACR have made in the forty plus year history. Live, recent recruit Viv takes on Jez's bass duties and singer Ellen Beth Abdi adds her vocals. The film is great, the gig brought to life six months later, the interviews an insight into the band and the way they work, and the songs are superb from the title track through to the closer Dorothy Says, Jez channeling Dorothy Parker in his lyrics, 'If you want to know what God thinks of money/ Just look at the people who've got it' and 'I plan to die at the very last minute', as well as a wry line about homosexuality. It's a great document and performance and I hope we're going to get the second half at some point too. 

More Flightpath And An Alliance

More Flightpath Estate news today. A couple of weeks ago the latest edition of Uncut hit the newsagent's shelves, a suited and booted Nick Cave resplendent on the cover and inside, with Wild God sitting pretty in the Uncut album of the year list. The magazine comes with a booklet, My Year In Music, in which a disparate group of leftfield musicians give us the lowdown on what they've been listening to in 2024- contributors include Thurston Moore, Gruff Rhys, Phil Manzanera, Anais Mitchell, Richard Thompson, Lawrence, Bill Callahan, Aiden Moffat, Joan Wasser, Bill Ryder- Jones, Isobel Campbell, Katy J Pearson and Andy Bell. In his piece Andy Bell talks about the Four Tet album 3 and Jamie Xx's In Waves, Beak>, Fontaines DC, Orbital and others. 

He then casually drops in this- ''Todmorden label (and absolute heroes) Golden Lion Sounds put out an excellent compilation called Sounds From the Flightpath Estate, a celebration of the spirit of Andrew Weatherall. Full disclosure: this is an album contributed to, but I wanted to highlight it because all the music is such high quality, notably, the Hardway Bros tracks 'Theme For Flightpath Estate''.

This tip of the Ride/ GLOK hat from Andy was very nice obviously and totally unexpected. Yesterday came the Piccadilly Records end of year lists, which are always published in beautiful booklet form, free to pick up from the shop or slipped into any order from them for the cost of 1 penny. When we had our album stocked briefly in Piccadilly Records back in April and had the window takeover event I think we quietly hoped that we might feature in Piccadilly's end of year list but certainly didn't expect it. Piccadilly's lists came out- the top 30 Collections (compilations and re- issues) is where our interest is and our album is placed at number 13. Ahead of us lie some big hitters and local heroes- not least Down To The Sea And Back, Luke Una, some siblings from Burnage, an excellent Jason Boardman compilation I reviewed for Ban Ban Ton Ton, Richard Norris, Galaxie 500, Aphex Twin and The Charlatans. Some decent company to keep! The whole list can be found here. 

This is all very exciting for us. A year ago we had most of the tracks that make up Sounds Of The Flightpath Estate Volume 1 sitting on our hard drives, a promise from Rotters Golf Club that we could have a then unreleased Weatherall and Tenniswood track and some ongoing discussions with Golden Lion Sounds about mastering and release dates. What's happened since has exceeded our hopes and expectations at every stage- and as a friend said yesterday, 'you've done this from scratch'. Back in the summer Waka from The Golden Lion said to me, 'imagine it, then create it'. That's the spirit of it I guess- and that's what we've done. And yes, we did call the album Volume 1 for a reason...

Andy Bell, who contributed his cover of Smokebelch that closes the album so appropriately, had an album out very recently, a collaboration with Timothy Clerkin with Andy in his experimental/ electronic GLOK guise. The pair met at Andrew's funeral and made a vague agreement to work together and then during lockdown began exchanging ideas and tracks, bouncing files back and forth. This has resulted in Alliance, a record that for me should be featuring in all the end of year lists, seven slices of experimental but laser focussed guitars x electronics. The music has some influences close to the surface- Aphex Twin, Death In Vegas, Boards Of Canada- but it transcends them at every turn. It is hypnotic, 21st century psychedelic and kosmische. Opener Empyrean kicks in with a huge distorted synth bass riff and then builds, waves of synths and chanted/ looped backing vox in layers. AmigA stutters on after it, tripped out and floating with acoustic guitars, rippling melodies and early shoegaze vocals. On Nothing Ever singer Du Blonde takes the reins, a scuzzed out indie- pop song, with the refrain 'nothing ever goes my way' circling round and round. Scattered is the sound of My Bloody Valentine in 1990 deciding to ditch the noise and FX pedals and dive full frontal into acid house, fed into the blender, with Andy's chopped up, spoken word, non sequiturs, scattered throughout- 'I was driving' and 'it's all too much' punctuated by 'need somebody' and 'scattered'.

The Witching Hour heads out further onto the floor, drums kicking in, the metronomic kick finding its rhythm, backwards guitars and a Wrote For Luck groove taking over. Then a massive bass guitar riff takes the lead. Swirling lights, strobes, light shows. E- Theme takes us to the end, a tinny guitar riff that could be from Ride's early EP/ Nowhere (actually played by Tim) and Aphex Twin vocal fragments, with a rising tide of synths. Magickal stuff- Andy some of the tracks took him into 'a Pagan, pre- Christian headspace... prehistoric rave' and this is a) a very good analogy and b) right up my strasse. You can listen and buy to the whole of Alliance here. 

The Flightpath And The Lion

On Saturday 16th November The Golden Lion in Todmorden hosted another ALFOS, the long running travelling cosmic disco started by Andrew Weatherall and Sean Johnston in 2010, now flown single handedly by Sean. The Golden Lion is one of A Love From Outer Space's spiritual homes and a capacity crowd is guaranteed. The upstairs room hosted a pair of live performances, Psychederek and The Thief Of Time (both of whom I saw play at Yard in Manchester in the summer and asked to play at the Lion by landlord Waka following my post about the gig). Downstairs, from 2pm through until Sean taking over at 8.30, saw the return of The Flightpath Estate DJ team- myself, Martin, Dan, Mark and Baz. Due to being required in Birmingham early the day after Baz went first and played for an hour. After he'd finished his set the remaining four of us rotated playing three tracks each for the next five hours. 

You can listen to a re- creation of our set at Mixcloud, six hours of music starting with Billy Fury's Wondrous Place and finishing with a very unofficial and unreleased edit of The Fall, Blind Panic, by Skip Wimbish that Mark actually played twice. We had planned to record the set live but the gear let us down. Instead the version of the set you can hear is a fairly faithful recreation of what we played but with a couple of unreleased things swapped out for legal/ release date reasons. As ever we had a blast and are eternally grateful every time we play for the opportunity. This time around, the Lion began to fill up fairly early so we actually had an audience too. And to everyone who told how much they enjoyed our sets, thank you. After us, Sean came on and lifted the Lion's roof. 

Barry

• [0:00] Billy Fury: Wondrous Place
• [3:00] Coyote: Living In Heaven
• [10:00] The Bats: We Do Not Kick The Ones We Kiss
• [13:00] Kid Congo: La Llarona
• [16:00] David Sylvian & Riuichi Sakamoto: Bamboo Houses (7" Mix)
• [20:00] Martin Hannett & Steve Hopkins: Scandinavian Waters
• [25:00] Escape-ism: Almost No One (Can Have My Love)
• [28:00] Vito Ricci: I'm At That Party Right Now
• [31:00] Happy Mondays: Bob's Yer Uncle
• [36:00] Maximum Joy: Simmer Till Done
• [39:00] Chain And The Gang: Deathbed Confession
• [45:00] Richard Sen: Eleven Eleven
• [51:00] Dean & Britta: Not A Young Man Anymore
• [55:00] Coyote: Dover
• [59:00] The Stranglers: Strange Little Girl

Martin

• [1:02:00] Pmxper: Stitch
• [1:05:00] Elucid: In The Shadow Of If
• [1:08:00] Holy Tongue Meets Shackleton: The Other Side Of The Bridge

Adam

• [1:14:00] The Fall: The Steak Place
• [1:17:00] Iraina Mancini: Undo The Blue (Beyond The Wizards Sleeve Re-Animation)
• [1:25:00] The Cure: Pictures Of You (Extended Dub)

Dan

• [1:31:00] J-Walk: Spring Well, Wellspring
• [1:35:00] Cocteau Twins: Cherry-Coloured Funk
• [1:38:00] The Sirons: Cruise Missile Blues

Mark

• [1:42:00] Skip Wimbish: Blind Panic
• [1:49:00] James Hardway vs Rude Audio: Unreleased Vocal Remix
• [1:54:00] James Hardway vs Rude Audio: Unreleased Dub

Martin

• [1:59:00] Autumns: Interpretive Dance Is A Scam
• [2:02:00] REDACTED
• [2:08:00] Om Unit: Pursuit

Adam

• [2:11:00] My Bloody Valentine: Don't Ask Why
• [2:15:00] GLOK/ Timothy Clerkin: Scattered
• [2:21:00] David Holmes: Hey Lisa

Dan

• [2:25:00] The Cure: Lullaby (Extended Mix)
• [2:33:00] J-Walk: Botox Fomo
• [2:37:00] Five Green Moons: Spider Dub

Mark

• [2:42:00] The Sabres Of Paradise: Lick Wid Nit Wit
• [2:53:00] Lockdown 187 Kung Fu (unknown white label)
• [2:59:00] The Sabres Of Paradise: Smokebelch II Edit

Martin

• [3:02:00] Radiohead: Everything In Its Right Place (Reinier Zonneveld's Filth on Acid Remix)
• [3:08:00] El Deux: Gletscher (Mehmet Aslan Edit)
• [3:14:00] Sweet Exorcist: Testone

Adam

• [3:21:00] The Clean Trip: Lobster Boys (Hifi Sean Remix)
• [3:28:00] Four Tet: Three Drums
• [3:36:00] Marshall Watson & Cole Odin: Voyager (Extended Guitar Mix)

Dan

• [3:42:00] Conforce: Aphelion
• [3:48:00] Mudd: Spielplatz (Quiet Village Deep Space Dub)

Mark

• [3:59:00] The Pink Diamond Revue: Elvis Presley
• [4:03:00] Ron Rogers: Yaya (Nelue Rework Mutant Disco Edit)
• [4:08:00] Jua: Akio Nagase

Martin

• [4:14:00] Georges Chatelain & Getaroom: Mandrake
• [4:19:00] Flash Atkins, Sirius Rush: Who Am I
• [4:25:00] Andrew Weatherall: Walk Of Shame (Hardway Bros Inglorious March Of Shame)

Adam

• [4:33:00] Galliano: Cabin Fever Dub
• [4:38:00] The Clash: This Is Radio Clash
• [4:42:00] The Fat White Family: Bullet Of Dignity (Beyond The Wizards Sleeve Re-animation)

Dan

• [4:49:00] Escapismo: Nada Importa
• [4:54:00] Tolouse Low Trax: Rushing Into Water
• [5:02:00] Stylic: Egregor

Martin

• [5:08:00] Pinky Perzelle: No Games (Velvet Season & The Hearts Of Gold Remix)
• [5:15:00] Edwin Starr: Get Up/Whirlpool
• [5:19:00] Satellites: World At Your Feet (Johnny Vic Remix)

Adam

• [5:25:00] Public Image Ltd: This Is Not A Love Song
• [5:30:00] Essaie Pas: Futur Parlé
• [5:36:00] A Certain Ratio: We All Need (Jezebell's Ghost Train Mix)

Dan

• [5:42:00] Broken English Club: Godless
• [5:47:00] Pete Blaker: Andrew

Mark

• [5:57:00] Skip Wimbish :Blind Panic (Revisited)

I See All And I See Nothing

Back in October I wrote about a new Justin Robertson project, Five Green Moons, a weirdly wonderful track called One Little Moon which I said had a feel of The Wicker Man meets King Tubbys Uptown, pagan/ folk spliced with post punk dub. Since the album arrived it's had a lot of play on my stereo, eleven slices of Justin's current sound served up in a way that builds on what he's been doing at virous places in the last few years- his novel The Tangle, some of the dubbings he's put out at his Bandcamp page, the Deadstock 33s EP on Pamela earlier this year, and the sounds and feel on the track he gave us for Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Vol. 1, Curtains Twitch On Peaks. Justin knows his stuff- he reads, he paints, he understands where things come from, and Five Green Moons album Moon 1 fits within this demi- world he's sketching out. 

The album opens with some percussive noises, the Space Echo FX unit kicking into life and a distorted PiL bassline bumping into earshot. Several disembodied voices flit in and out of the mix. A detuned guitar line cuts in. The bassline keeps repeating itself. The sound of the ancient, weird, folklore version of the English countryside- not the one the tourists see with Cotswold stone and green and pleasant fields but something darker- hedgerows, thorns, a foreboding cottage in the valley with one light flickering in a dirty window. Strange goings on.  

Tiny Spiral Loom rattles around, the speakers vibrating, guitars and bass running against each other as hi hats hiss. On Dark Wing Soundwave he channels the urban dub that his friend Andrew Weatherall found in Sabres Of Paradise, repetition and basslines combining with acres of space. I See All And I See Nothing is a little lighter, the clouds clearing at least for a while, the bass and percussion gliding and Justin's echo- laden guitars more beatific. 

There are echoes all over Moon 1 and the sounds conjure all sorts of memories too, things happening just of earshot. What did that voice say? What was that? Have I been here before? Memories, echoes, questions. 

Flip the album over and Song Of Dust splutters into life, insistent, stuttering rhythms building and a horn playing an off kilter melody. Another voice, speaking lines of verse about jealous gods and effigies. 

Spider Dub follows, another huge Sabres- esque bassline, organ, the hiss of a steam engine, a slowed down 1950s guitar line fed through a valve amp, all pushed along with the propulsion of PiL circa Metal Box. There's more to follow. In The Emptiness could be a dubbed out children's TV theme tune.  Materials Made From The Blood is wonky, pastoral psychedelia, encountered in a wooden village hall you wandered into accidentally when taking shelter from the elements. Justin's voice returns, intoning esoteric lines. Everything's A Song In A Sound World is beamed in from the dystopian discotheque. Final track Cracked Cloud Before War enters gently, synths and a calming rising and falling bass, massively distorted horns (maybe?) playing a distant haunted dancehall melody. Moon 1 is a self contained album/ world, a moon in its own orbit, the old woodland gods and vanishing 19th century folklore rubbing up against Studio 1 bass, a folked up, pagan dub soundtrack for late 2024. 

Monday's Long Song

Over at the Totem Bandcamp page you can find some very tasty Totem Edits including the most recent one, Totem Edit 14 Zombi. Dense and deep, swirling, hypnotic, rhythmic and multi- layered, dubbed out, chanted vocals, a certain Gallic flair. It's a beauty. 

Totem Projects is a repository for edits and other stuff by Leo Zero and Justin Deighton, a formidable team. Previous Totem edits include a recent one by Hardway Bros, Cali, and from near the start Totem Edit 03 Hoomba (a version of  the 1990 classic Hoomba Hoomba by Voice Of Africa) among the treasure trove. All available for free/ pay what you want. What's not to like?

Totem Edit 4 Zombi is a version of the song by Les Negresses Verte's Zobi La Mouche, a 1988 single and also on the 1989 album Mlah. Les Negresses Verte's fusion of French chanson, folk and world music made them a dead cert for the more broad minded clubs of the late 80s, from the Mediterranean to northern Britain. In fact, Leo Zero said of the edit, that he had one of the great dancefloor moments of his life when he walked into Ku in Ibiza in the summer of '89 to hear Mr Weatherall playing Zobi La Mouche. 

Zobi La Mouche (Single Mix)

This version, remixed by William Orbit, was often the one to reach for, the song retained with the exact amount of late 80s acid house brought in to raise the roof. The acidic squiggle breakdown in the middle section especially. 

Zobi La Mouche (William Orbit Remix)

Forty Five Minutes Of Sunday Songs

It seemed too obvious for a while but then a few things came together and a Sunday mix of Sunday songs was staring me in the face. I managed to give it a kind of narrative too with a beginning and an end. Not to mention plenty of good music in the middle- Sunday likes its ambient and its electronics. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Sunday Songs

• Kris Kristofferson: Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down
• Kevin McCormick: Sunday Farmway
• Sabres Of Paradise: Blackfriars Sunday (Peel Session)
• 10:40: Sunday's Cool
• Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve: Sunday Morning Sun- g
• Sonic Youth: Sunday
• Perry Granville: Cleveland Sunday
• Justin Cudmore: Sunday Lemonade
• Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds: Frogs

Kris Kristofferson is the starting point for this mix. He died in September at the age of 88. Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down was written in 1969 and was been recorded and released by Johnny Cash and Ray Stevens. Kris' version is the best though. He wrote it and he lived it and felt it. 'Well I woke up Sunday mornin' with no way to hold my head that didn't hurt/ And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad, so I had one more for dessert'. Then he finds his cleanest dirty shirt and heads out. There are cigarettes, cans being kicked, frying chicken and 'the disappearing dreams of yesterday'. 

Kevin McCormick is from Manchester and in the early 80s made some wonderful but very lost and overlooked ambient guitar music. Thankfully, Kevin's albums have been rediscovered, dusted down and re- released recently and they are very much worth diving into. Sunday Farmway it from Sticklebacks and you can get it here. I reviewed the latest one, Passing Clouds, at Ban Ban Ton Ton last month- you can read that here. 

In March 1995 Sabres Of Paradise recorded a Peel Session that has never been officially released, three tracks also never appearing anywhere else- Duke On Berwick, Stanshall's Lament and the one here, Blackfriars Sunday, the sound of the Sabres Sunday service. Next year the reformed Sabres Of Paradise live band will perform at Primavera and then hopefully in the UK and elsewhere. 

Sunday's Cool was on of the tracks on 10:40's Transition Theory, one of my favourite albums of 2023. The album was intended as a whole piece, each track segueing into the next and containing the seeds of the next one. Removing Sunday's Cool from its moorings didn't feel completely right but it fits nicely into its new surroundings here too. 

Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve marry 60s psychedelia with acid house, Richard Norris and Erol Alkan experts at both. Sunday Morning Sun- g is from a fairly rare 12" from 2007.

'Sunday comes alone again/ A perfect day for a quiet friend', sang Thurston Moore and Sonic Youth in 1998. Sunday was the only single from A Thousand Leaves. Full on Sunday guitar vibes.

Perry Granville's Cleveland Sunday is from a 2022 EP, a take- no- prisoners acid thumper. Get it and a pair of remixes here. Sundays spent dancing and warding off the horrors of Monday morning. 

Justin Cudmore's Sunday Lemonade came out on New York label Throne Of Blood, as part of a series of releases in 2022 to celebrate their sixteenth birthday. Sunday Lemonade is all bleeps, filters and FX with a kick drum thundering away underneath. Messy Sunday mornings. 

Frogs came out this year, the second song ahead of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds' Wild God album. It has followed me round all year, soundtracking my daily life, one of this year's best songs and one of Nick's best too. In Frogs a couple (him and Susie I assume) are walking home in the Sunday rain, having heard the story of Cain and Abel. Nick becomes aware of the Sunday rain and the natural world around him, the sheer aliveness of everything, frogs in the gutter and Nick 'amazed of love and amazed of pain/ Amazed to be back in the water again'. Kris Kristofferson walks by kicking a can, in a shirt he hasn't washed for years, and there we are, back at the beginning. Happy Sunday. 

Twenty Six

Today, 23rd November 2024, should have been Isaac's twenty sixth birthday. Instead, he's twenty three forever. The build up to today through the last few weeks has been quite gruelling, today's date and next Saturday's (the anniversary of his death) hanging over us. It adds a heaviness to everything and there are times when I have quite vivid flashbacks of exactly what we were doing three years ago, his 23rd birthday and then the week that followed. 

He's always there in some ways, hanging around just out of view. I still hear him sometimes, very clearly saying things at or to me. Recently I went to see him at the cemetery and his headstone, which we had put in back in July, had bird shit all over his name. It was very dismaying, I was quite upset by it for a moment, and then I heard him say, 'there's bird poo on my name Dad' and chuckle- and I smiled. The only thing I had with me to clean it was my Woodleigh Research Facility tote bag so there I was, half upset and half smiling, scrubbing Isaac's headstone with an Andrew Weatherall related cloth bag dipped in water from the nearby standpipe. He'd have laughed at that too (and I think Andrew probably would have as well).

Happy birthday Isaac. Love you. X

This record has become one I associate with him. The copy in the picture below is actually Isaac's, bought for him by a friend of mine when he was born. North Country Boy was released in 1997, Isaac was born in 1998. Neil came round with this and a copy of The Clash's Train In Vain on 7" not long after Isaac got home from hospital in December 1998. Twenty three years later, we played it at Isaac's funeral. 

In September last year I saw The Charlatans at New Century Hall. They played Between 10th And 11th in full and then the hits and although I was bracing myself for the moment, it still hit deep when it came, those big guitar chords, walloping drums and Hammond riffs, and then Tim singing, 'Hey country boy/ what are you sad about?/Every day you make the sun come out...' 

It's amazing, the power music has, that magical combination of chords, banging, electricity and words- words that were written by someone else, about something else, that one day become about you... 

'Even in the pouring rain/ I'll come to see you'

You wouldn't believe how often we go to the cemetery in the rain- or how often we go to the cemetery and it starts raining. I mean, I know we live in Manchester but even so, it rains a lot up at that cemetery. There he is again. 'I don't like the rain Dad'.  

When we walked into the chapel at Isaac's funeral and this song was ringing out, I did for a moment think that I'd never be able to listen to it again, that it would be forever too much. Happily, it isn't. I hear it now and I think of him. 

'I'll be good to you/ If I could I'd make you happy/ If I had a boy I'd be good to my daddy/ Who loves you but I bet it's not the same/ As your north country boy'.

North Country Boy

Forever Held

New from the combined talents of Jon Hopkins and Olafur Arnalds is Forever Held, a track that is only three minutes and twenty one seconds long and yet manages to contain within it the entire history of the universe, from the very dawn of the beginning of time to the end of everything, via synths, orchestral strings (arrangement by Olafur) and keys, and some very faint drums, ending in a drawn out sigh. Weirdly and for reasons I'm not sure of, the version available to buy at Bandcamp is even shorter, just two minutes thirty eight. 

Forever Held was inspired by a collaboration between Jon and NASA, an immersive experience at NASA HQ in Washington DC. Apparently, it was also used as part of the opening track on the recent Coldplay album and they came on stage to it at Glastonbury last June. Fret not, they won't be mentioned here again. 

Intercommunications

A new Dub Syndicate/ Adrian Sherwood release was announced yesterday, a brand new set of versions built on the rhythm tracks from tapes recorded by Adrian and Style Scott in the period between 1989 and 1996- a set of new dubs of old tracks, Adrian at the mixing desk pushing and pulling those faders around to reshape Dub Syndicate once more. The first cut from is this, Intercommunications, a low key and low slung four minutes and forty seconds of On U dub splendour. Intercommunications makes time disappear- it could easily be three times as long and not lose any of its charms. 

The album- Obscured By Version- is out next February along with a five CD box set anthology of Dub Syndicate from '89- '96 called Out Here On The Perimeter and single disc re- issues of four albums, Stoned Immaculate, Strike The Balance, Echomania and Ital Breakfast. Obscured By Version is available at all the usual places including Bandcamp. 

Back in 1985 Dub Syndicate released Tunes From The Missing Channel, a heavy duty collision of On U dub, Jamaican dub, Sherwood's industrial/ sampling, Ashanti Roy from The Congos and contributions from Jah Wobble and Keith Levene. Nine slices of classic mid- 80s On U Sound. I was going to post Ravi Shankar Pt. 1 but I've done that before- instead, try this... 'something nice is going to happen to your ears', as the man says.

The Show Is Coming

J Saul Kane

My social media timelines were full on Monday night and Tuesday with tributes to J Saul Kane who has died aged just fifty five. He'd become quite reclusive in recent years and had more or less given up making music, concentrating on photography instead, but in the 1990s he was one of the founding fathers of what became known as trip hop. His music was dusty, atmospheric and beat heavy, sampled spaghetti Westerns, martial arts films and Brazilian football commentators and he was a DJ who knew how to fill and move a dancefloor, as J Saul Kane, Depth Charge and The Octagon Man. He was a pioneer and trailblazer. Trip hop seems reductive somehow- this is cinematic electronic funk a weird hybrid of hip hop and dance music (that's pretty much trip hop I guess but J Saul Kane's music never became dinner party music which was the fate of a lot of 90s trip hop). 

In 1994 I bought Shaolin Buddha Finger by Depth Charge, having heard the title track somewhere in Manchester after dark. A dark, swirling piece of electronic breakbeat with advice about how to attack a man using the titular digit, layers of samples and a massive buzzing bassline. The album Nine Deadly Venoms followed, an essential mid- 90s album and then the Legend Of The Golden Snake EP. 

Shaolin Buddha Finger

He was still producing great records into the 2000s. This one came out in 2004, a filthy, juddering blitz of beats, samples and undulating bass. 

Hi Voltage Man

Back in 1995 J Saul was one of a select group of artists who got to remix The Sabres Of Paradise. There were a pair of Depth Charge remixes of Tow Truck (from Haunted Dancehall). The Sabres original was an alternative James Bond theme if 007 had come from East London and sold second hand motors rather than lived life as an international spy. J Saul broke it down even further, a grinding bass heavy swim through the murk. 

Tow Truck (Depth Charge Mix II)

His music chimed with the trip hop artists and with the world of The Beastie Boys and Grand Royale and his influence on labels like Mo Wax and Ninja Tune was enormous. His passing is very sad news, especially having died so young. RIP J Saul Kane. 

Broken Beauty

Jason Boardman's Manchester based Before I Die label has become one of the ones to watch in 2023 and 2024, a small is beautiful aesthetic coupled with some very strong music, with Nuremberg's Konformer making one of last year's best albums and this year releases from Klangkollektor and Khartomb both raising the bar again. The latest release is from J- Walk (otherwise known a Martin Fisher/ Martin Brew), an album called Broken Beauty, made in a room in Stockport using cheap and long forgotten keyboards, guitars and amps, unplugging from the world, switching the Casios and Yamahas on and seeing what happens. The result is a ten track album that blends dub, post- punk experimentation, tropical rhythms, digi- dub and DIY culture. 

There is something special about Broken Beauty, something spontaneous but also something that can only come from a lifetime of soaking music up, steeping oneself in the culture and coming at making music anew. It also sounds like Martin had a lot of fun making it. This is Black Lion Passage, Stopfordian dub of the highest quality. 

You can find the album at Bandcamp, and if you're lucky there may be some vinyl copies left at some of the shops- Bandcamp have sold all of theirs. Pick any of the ten tracks and you'll find gold. This is Walking In The Sunshine, more superb sounding J- Walk tropical/ dub from the sunny streets of Stockport, a cover of the 1982 Balearic pop  song by Laid Back, the Danish duo of John Guldberg and Tim Stahl. 

Monday's Long Song

A remix from the end of October that I should have posted then but something else always nudged it a few days back and then suddenly it's Monday and, hey presto, it finds a home in the Monday long song slot. Max Essa and David Harks are The Clean Trip. Max has been making electronic music since the 90s, releasing on Warp and Manchester's Paper Recordings, plus the D.I.Y. Sound System. In July this year the duo released an EP as The Clean Trip, four chuggy, summer sounding tracks, dreamy/ blissed out Balearic sunset pop. You can find it here.  Two of the tracks got the remix treatment and this one has been getting repeat plays round the Bagging Area way, memories of summer and the warmth of the sun- Lobster Boys remixed by Hifi Sean, seven minutes and fifteen seconds of dubbed out, spaced out, end of the night, Italo cosmic disco splendour, with a gently sighing vocal.

Wasn't that a lovely way to spend some of your Monday in the dull, misty, murk of November? It's what Dr Rob at Ban Ban Ton Ton would call a chocolate milk and brandy kind of track. You can buy it plus a Takovoi remix of Magic Eyes at Bandcamp. 

Forty Five Minutes Of The Cure

The Cure's late 2024/ late career album Songs Of a Lost World is very much a gift that keeps giving and the recent televised gigs plus an hour of The Cure at the BBC had me going back to the band's music. That meant a Sunday mix was going to happen sooner or later and here it is, a selection centred around some of the best pop/ indie/ goth singles of the 1980s along with a few remixes and album tracks. Looking at the tracklist you might think that I've gone for some of the obvious choices- and you'd be right, I have- but there's a nice ebb and flow to it. A Cure Mix of deeper cuts might need to follow at some point in the future. I said recently that their music has meant more to me as time has gone on, and the way that Robert Smith has kept the band's integrity intact, and the quality of songs and albums so high, should be an inspiration to others about how to do it, how to grow old with your credibility and dignity in one piece. He stands up against immoral ticketing practices too, something some heritage rock acts should take note of. 

Forty Five Minutes Of The Cure

• Alone
• Pictures Of You (Extended Dub Mix)
• Shiver And Shake
• In Between Days
• The Caterpillar
• Lullaby
• Fascination Street (Extended Mix)
• A Forest
• Just Like Heaven

Alone came out at the end of September this year ahead of the album Songs Of A Lost World, a majestic crawl through Smithworld, the first new Cure song for sixteen years and one which delivers on all promises. Seven minutes long, the first half all glacial synths, Simon Gallup's bass and crashing drums and then at last, Robert Smith comes in with the line, 'this is the end of every song we sing', a heck of a way to announce your comeback. The album deals with endings, mortality, human frailties, loss- now all experienced for real as life has taken its toll. 

Pictures Of You came out in March 1990, a gloriously melancholic song that I find incredibly moving, especially since Isaac died. It was also on Mixed Up, a 1990 remix album, four sides of vinyl, that shifted The Cure's songs into the brave new world of the 1990s. The eight minute extended version of Fascination Street was also on Mixed Up and previously came out on the 12" of that single the year before, a nine minute recreation of a raucous band night out in New Orleans in 1985.

Shiver And Shake was on Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, the band's 1987 double album that saw them spread out musically and thematically- Velvets inspired rock, post punk pop, some goth gloom and some of the sunny South of France (where it was recorded) breaking through too. Shiver And Shake is spiteful, gnarly, fast paced proto- grunge/ rock- 'You're a waste of time/ You're just a babbling face'- that grinds away as Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me's penultimate song. The song that closes this mix is Just Like Heaven, sublime indie- pop, that nestles inside the centre of Kiss Me, a moment of sheer joy. 

In Between Days was a 1985 single. What is there to say about it? Superlative breezy mid- 80s pop, with hyperactive acoustic guitars, New Order- esque bass, and hooks aplenty. 

The Caterpillar is a wiggy, psychedelic single from 1984, a funny little song from the band when they were still a three piece.

Lullaby was a 1989 single, a creeped out goth rock single from a time when the indie rock world was transforming from the mid- 80s indie scene into something else, something more confident, more colourful. Robert Smith's spindly nightmare/ catchy but slightly disconcerting pop song might have seemed a bit out of place or out of time. Plucked violins, a whispered vocal about spiders- a top ten hit, obviously. 

A Forest was The Cure's first hit single from way back in 1980, a definitive early 80s post- punk song and one of The Cure's best moments. Shimmering, primordial gloom with the bass driving it forwards a Bob sings of existential dread/ a walk in the woods.  

V.A. Saturday

Last Saturday's various artists compilation album featured four ferocious 1950s rockabilly songs. Today's post comes from a connected place. Rock On was apparently the country's, maybe the world's, first collectors record shop, a vinyl goldmine dedicated to retro music- rock 'n' roll, rockabilly, blues, doo wop, 60s beat, soul, ska and reggae, jazz, 50s and 60s pop, more or less every type of music that was pressed onto black wax. It opened as a market stall at the back of the flea market on Portobello Road in August 1971. Rock On opened a shop on Golborne Road, near Portobello, a couple of years later and then a second stall in Soho market in 1974 and from there one in Camden too. In the mid- to- late 70s it played a key role in punk, a stop off for 7" singles for the movers and shakers (despite the punk's talk of '76 being Year Zero).  

In 2008 Ace Records put out a twenty eight track CD various artists compilation in tribute to Rock On, a line up of songs that were the soundtrack of the shop. The booklet has very detailed sleeve notes by Ted Carroll, an ever present in the shop from the early 70s. From the opening song to the last, the CD is very much a pre- punk party, a slew of songs from the likes of Vince Taylor, Link Wray, The Flamin' Groovies, Dr Feelgood, Waylon Jennings, Roky Erickson, Peter Holsapple, The Shangri La's, Charlie Feathers, Slim Harpo, Fats Domino, Don Covey and Joe Tex. This is just a handful of those for your Saturday morning pre- punk rave up.

Slim Harpo released Shake Your Hips on 7" in 1965, electrified Louisiana, mouth organ, clackety rhythms and clipped guitar, horns and Slim's raspy vocal. Mick Jagger was listening and taking notes. 

Shake Your Hips

Roky Erickson's Two Headed Dog came out in 1977, the version on Rock On a French release rather than the Doug Sahm produced Sponge EP version. Blistering acid guitar lead line, crunching chords, and Roky giving it the full Texan vocal. 'I've been working for the Kremlin with a two headed dog'.

Two Headed Dog

Waylon Jennings' Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way? came out in 1975, a gimlet eyed country song about the price paid for a career in the music business, Waylon reaching Nashville peddling that same old tune, rhinestone suits and shiny cars, and asking the question, 'are you sure Hank done it this way?'. A rhetorical question I think. Hank Williams did it his own way. 

Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?

Lastly, some more rockabilly from 1957 by Peanuts Wilson and an Andrew Weatherall favourite from his rockabilly sets in the 00s too. 

Cast Iron Arm

Speaking of Mr Weatherall, this afternoon we are off to one of his spiritual homes, Todmorden's Golden Lion. Tonight is A Love From Outer Space, the night Andrew started in 2010 with Sean Johnston, a travelling cosmic disco that Sean has flown solo ever since. Me and my Flightpath Estate friends (Martin, Dan, Baz and Mark) are DJing at the pub from 2pm through until whenever Sean takes over. Upstairs this evening is a double header by the Stretford pairing of Psychederek and The Thief Of Time. It promises to be a lot of fun. 

Bounds

In 2020 I bought a double album by Craven Faults, Erratics And Nonconformities, six tracks of foreboding analogue ambient, modular synths, dark kosmische, made to accompany walks across post- industrial northern Britain, the soundtrack to abandoned foundries, stone walls, damp valleys, murky canal towpaths and moorland. It was hugely atmospheric and difficult to ignore, not the sort of ambient that becomes background music but foreground instrumental ambient, a very present sound. Sometimes it would leave me feeling totally enveloped by the sound, layers of recorded sound that bore a hole through me and left me feeling like something cathartic had happened. One evening listening to it it made me feel anxious and like the world was caving in. Full disclosure- this was after Isaac died and maybe is as much about how I was feeling as about the music, but I haven't been back to Craven Faults since. 

A new EP came out last month, four tracks that are intended to soundtrack a thirty seven minute trek across some part of northern England. Craven Faults is non- specific about the precise location but it's 'less than twenty miles north west of the city' (Leeds? Sheffield? Bradford?) and takes in the gathering dusk, a gritstone pillar destroyed by lightning, a tarn, and hillsides. The tracks- Long Stoop, Groups Hollows, Lampes Mosse and Waste & Demesne- vary from five minutes through to eighteen and are best encountered in one sitting, a kosmische but also earthbound trip where repetition is central and layers of analogue sound and drones build, with occasional sudden bursts of synth swooping in, like a flock of birds wheeling overhead. Buy Bounds at Bandcamp.

Won't Somebody Sign My Release?

Julian Cope's non- stop creative motion continues not just with a stream of albums but with his series of booklets called Cope's Notes. Each one focusses on a specific album or period, is packed with Julian's memories of the time and explanations of what he was doing and why he was doing it, along with photos, pages from notebooks and memorabilia, plus a CD of new/ extra/ unreleased materials. They are a treasure trove for the Cope fan. Cope's Notes #5 was a 48 page booklet and CD titled How I Wrote The Modern Antiquarian... And Why and was followed in the summer by Cope's Notes #6 Jehovakill. 

In 1991 Cope was at the crest of a wave. Peggy Suicide was a hit and a long world tour with a full band had seen some incredible performances. Julian was in creative overdrive and on finishing the tour was desperate to keep moving and head straight to record more songs. His band and roadies had become hyper fixated on krautrock the longer they'd been on the road and Julian was grabbing moments in hotel rooms with Dictaphones and portable recorders to get songs out of his head and onto tape. Cope's energies had been supercharged by the opposition to Thatcher's poll tax, his giant green alien outfit Sqwubbsy, not to mention his new and deeply felt attachment to Britain's neolithic past and in 1991 the birth of his daughter Albany. Jehovakill is a sequel to Peggy Suicide, the second part of a trilogy, and very much an album from a purple patch in Julian's recording history- even if Island disagreed and rejected the first version an eleven song album called Julian H. Cope, 'the most sonically unappealing album I've ever heard' according to managing director of the record label Marc Marot. Undeterred Julian, Donald Ross Skinner, Rooster Cosby and guitar tech Rizla Deutsch kept going, channeling krautrock, dark folk and pre- Christian themes into the sixteen track opus that is Jehovakill, a mysterious and occult record. Hugo Nicolson (Hugoth), 'fresh' from being Andrew Weatherall's engineer and co- producer of choice and Primal Scream's synth and samples operator on stage, plays synth. 

Rizla Deutsch by the way, fired a toy rocket into a hotel air con unit in Japan that got Cope banned from ever performing in the country again. 

The CD that comes with Cope's Notes #6 is full of nuggets and versions, some reocrded onto Walkmen, some at Holt Studios and Shaun Harvey's, one for a radio session in London, some while on tour in Chicago and Los Angeles. It's a mini- Jehovakill in its own right and finishes with a version of Upwards At 45 Degrees, a key Jehoakill song. This version was recorded live on stage at Elephant & Castle while preparing for the Jehovakill tour with a field recording of a downpour made on a beach in Lanzarote by Rooster. 

Upwards At 45 Degrees (Version)

There are still some copies of Cope's Notes #6 left at Head Heritage. 

The Storm Has Passed

There are all sorts of explanations going round for Trump's victory in the US presidential election last week, some that try to boil things down to very simple ones. As ever with history and current affairs, things are multi- causal; Trump offered something that Kamala couldn't- change. He strikes a chord with people who have been told that the economy has been doing better but whose grocery bills have risen by 20%. His swaggering, macho bluster finds favour with American men who could not bring themselves to vote for a woman (and a Black woman at that). There are many Americans who see Trump as an outsider, someone who tells it 'as it is' and they see him as giving the elite a kicking. Some Americans have not forgiven the half of the nation who elected a Black president, Barrack Obama, twice. The assassination attempt that brushed Trump's ear gave him the single most important image of the campaign. The weaponising of 'the war on woke' and identity politics seems to have been a factor, the anti- immigrant narrative too.  Kamala's warnings of impending fascism were dismissed. There are studies that suggest that in any democratic society there are approximately 30% of the adult population who are happy with authoritarianism, who want strong leaders who get things done and are content with limits and curbs on democracy. All these things and more may help explain last week. For many Americans a binary choice led them to Trump. One thing is sure- in 2016 people might not have known what they were getting. They cannot say that this time around. It's completely clear what Trump is- and people voted for it. He will have few brakes on him this time around. It will be fascinating and terrifying seeing what happens over the next four years, potentially watching a democracy unravel in real time.

One of my most played albums recently has been on Mighty Force, a label which has had a resurgence in recent years, and 2024 especially. I've written before about M- Paths, an ambient/ techno outfit on Mighty Force. M- Paths Submerge came out earlier this year. Now, Marcus from M- Paths has released an album as Reverb Delay. It's not a side project or an offshoot, M- Paths and Reverb Delay are different parts of Marcus' music. M- Paths are calming and chilled. Reverb Delay are less so. Reverb Delay are dub techno in the 90s tradition- thumping drums, faster bpms, less friendly maybe but totally  absorbing, an intense and metronomic ride, reminiscent of Basic Channel and the sound of Detroit techno artists like Carl Craig and Juan Atkins.

The album, The Storm Has Passed, is fourteen tracks long, and is in part about Trump and MAGA. Unfortunately the storm is not passed, it's in some ways not even begun, but Reverb Delay are here to soundtrack the end of 2024. It's sequenced as a proper album, a short intro with the sampled voice of Mario Silvio in 1964 speaking at a sit- in in Berkeley. Third track Eating Echo Chambers uses the voices of ground control and the Apollo mission as they approached the moon, rattling snares and a thumping kick, ominous synths and acres of dub space. 

It's followed by Embrace which is long, dark and hissy, Berlin basement techno. Horizontal Rain has rapid fire beats and salvos of synth noise. On Maldek a crazed voice bursts in, railing against Jimmy Carter and a one world government. Track 11, Weaponizing, is grimly prophetic, sampling a Trump supporter talking about Biden weaponizing the FBI and how Trump will win again before the thud of the kick drum and juddering synths take over. 

The final pair of tracks, She and Verb, keep the tension high, train- like drum tracks pounding ever onwards, synth chords, a disembodied voice bringing the human element to this machine music. The Storm Has Passed ends in spooky style with Verb, dub space, the crackle of radio static, underwater bleeps and bubbles, and just audible the recently declassified sound files of US navy pilots describing their efforts to keep up with UFOs they've spotted. It's highly recommended and you can listen and buy it at Bandcamp. 

And It Feels Like I'm Coming Home

I've had an LCD Soundsystem renaissance this year, starting back in the early summer, kickstarted by their performance at Glastonbury, and have found all sorts to revisit and enjoy in their music. By happy coincidence James Murphy has put the group back together again and the first fruits of LCD Soundsystem 2024 came out eleven days ago with a single called X- Ray Eyes. What does it sound like? It sounds very much like LCD Soundsystem- vintage synth arpeggios, hissing drum machines, dead pan vocals from James from a space somewhere between ennui and anxiety, No Wave dance music for the middle aged...

In 2005 LCD Soundsystem followed the release of three groundbreaking singles (Losing My Edge, Give It Up and Yeah) with a self titled debut album that gave us more of the same and took LCD into some new places too. The razor sharp New York post punk/ disco of Daft Punk Are Playing At My House opened the album and this song closed it, not what I was expecting when I first played it, a gorgeous, sleepy eyed sunset/ sunrise tune, drum machine in the echoey distance and big Balearic piano chords with James dewy eyed and coming down after all that strobe lit dancing and nervous energy- 'And it feels like it won't come on/ And it takes like you're full of love/ Still the time never to pay on/ Still the time never to pay on/ And it feels like it's coming home/ And it feels like it's full of love/ Still in time is the great release'

Great Release