Staying in has been proclaimed as the new going out many times now. New Year's Eve is often the most overrated night out of the year but in the past we had fun going on NYE and I'm sure they'll be loads of people who do tonight. We have no plans to do anything major and hence will be in by the time 2025 comes around at midnight. In place of a crowded dance floor here's a Bagging Area NYE 2024 mix, starts out dubby, then goes Tricky, and then thumpy before calming down slightly and finishing with the return of a long gone 60s icon.
Everything on it was released this year and it's quite David Holmes and Hardway Bros heavy (which probably explains a lot of what I've listened to this year). I wanted to find room for several other tracks but also wanted to keep it down to under 80 minutes for those of you who still burn things to CD to play in the car (that may just be me). I tried to fit Acid Klaus in but couldn't make it work, Hardway Bros' Murky didn't find a place (and should have) and there's one segue where it's a bit off- Audacity isn't really for mixing more sequencing, and sometimes my patience gets replaced by my 'it'll do' attitude. But if you want a shuffle to some chuggy, leftfield, acidic, dubby, thumpy and ultimately life affirming electronic music at some point tonight, it might do the trick.
Silvertooth: Shut Um Down (A Dub From Outer Space)
Ammonite: You Don't Know Me (David Holmes Remix)
C.A.R.: Anzu (Hardway Bros Remix)
Peak High: Dance Hall Days (Hardway Bros Remix)
Causeway: Dancing With Shadows (Marshall's Club Mix)
Ben Hunt: Shimmering Lights (Rude Audio Remix)
Lisa Moorish: Sylvia (David Holmes Remix)
Raxon: Your Fault
Puerto Montt City Orchestra: Hey You (10:40 Remix)
100 Poems: Dubmobalearicswithmybreaksman
David Harrow celebrated turning 60 in 2024 by releasing music every month. One of those releases was a four track EP called Tight Chest with jazz/ techno/ dub/ surf legends Red Snapper. This was the lead track, a wonderful piece of 2024 dubbiness that should have got more attention than it did.
Theis Thaws was an album that saw the return of Tricky (Adrian Thaws) with French producer Mike Theis and singer Rosa Rocca- Serra. David Holmes' remix, as everyone said when it came out, was approximately three minutes too short but even at only three minutes eighteen seconds it packs a powerful if slightly paranoid punch.
Silvertooth, from South London, released Shut Um Down in November, a cover of Gil Scott Heron song, partly inspired by Sean Johnston's continuing ALFOS parties. It came in a variety of versions with two ALFOS aimed dubs- rolling pianos, chuggy dubby beats, and a lovely low slung groove.
Ammonite makes very ethereal music, layers of voice and gossamer drones. She remixed Holmes' Emotionally Clear into an ambient track. Holmes returned the favour by pumping Ammonite's You Don't Know Me up into an electronic banger.
C.A.R.'s Anzu lit up late 2023. The remixes came out in 2024, courtesy of GLOK and Hardway Bros. Sean's Hardway Bros remixes have been in full flow for the last few years and the standard is uniformly high. This one and the Hardway Bros Dub were on heavy rotation at Bagging Area back at the start of the year.
Peak High's cover of Wang Chung's Dance Hall Days was a delight, coming after the equally superb Was That All It Was in 2023. The Hardway Bros remix dubs things down, turning the 80s pop down a bit, and finds that BPM sweet spot that Sean knows very well.
Causeway are on Chris Massey's Manchester label Sprechen but the duo (Marshall Watson and Alison Rae) are based in California,a world away from South Manchester. Dancing With Shadows is the 80s teen film anthem you missed, the sounds playing in the disco where Molly Ringwald has a revelation while dancing with the wrong boy. It came with a slew of remixes- the one here is Marshall's own.
Ben Hunt's Shimmering Lights came out last month on Paisley Dark with a range of remixes, all of which hit the spot. Rude Audio remixes are often in the 98 BPM dub area. This one whacks it up and heads for end of the night Underworld vibes, the vocal sample, 'I see patterns in everything', twisting around like Karl Hyde in the mid- 90s.
Lisa Moorish's comeback single in April was a beautiful electro- pop tribute to Sylvia Plath. David Holmes' remix did exactly what you'd want from a Holmes remix.
Raxon's Your Fault was an autumn '24 highlight although I didn't catch on until later. It is fabulously wonky dance floor euphoria from Cologne, sounds shifting in and out, everything shifting and moving as if the floor is giving way.
Puerto Montt City Orchestra's Hey You came out on Brighton's Higher Love label, the home of many, many good releases. It's a cover of 80s indie band 14 Iced Bears Hay Fever with original singer Rob Sekula returning to do the vocals. On the 10:40 remix Jesse sent this woozy 2024 c86 song through a Spiritualized filter, everyone involved laid back in the sun.
100 Poems have released three albums this year, each one stuffed full of beautiful, brilliant tunes and a open minded anything goes attitude to making music and to life. Mike Wilson named the band after a collection of Seamus Heaney poems and the inscription on Heaney's headstone- 'walk on air against your better judgement'- is what the music is all about. On the third of the three albums, Balearic As A System Of Belief, Mike used the voice of Jim Morrison, a late 60s interview where he was talking about the future of music and how it would be electronic. And there may be a better way to see 2025 in than by listening to the utterances of the Lizard King repurposed for 2024/ 5 but I can't think of one at the moment.
Happy New Year everyone- in or out, have a good one.
One of the things I was able to do while ill last week was read and I ploughed through the recent Jesus And Mary Chain autobiography, Never Understood, in just a few sittings. Their story, from childhood in a Glasgow tenement next to Parkhead to the move to East Kilbride, their discovery of underground and outsider music that bound the two brothers together and then the formation and rise of the band, is told by William and Jim alternating, and often contradicting each other. It's revealing, hilarious at times, and also an account of how two men on different drugs (Jim alcohol and cocaine, William alcohol and weed) managed to function as a band and then gradually in the 90s stop functioning and tear themselves, the band and each other apart. Each brother is open about their personality traits and addictions, but there's also a sense that each one is telling part of the story through clenched teeth, a sense of 'we'll talk about this once and then pack it away again'. In a recent interview Jim was asked what he learned from doing the book and reflecting on the last forty years. 'Not to reflect on the last forty years of your life', was his answer.
William says that he thought firstly alcohol and then secondly being in a band would give him the confidence to talk to girls. Jim says that he thought that alcohol would give him the confidence to talk to anyone and to stand on stage and be the frontman- he was and is shy and socially anxious in the extreme. From their teens they formed a united front, finishing each others sentences, sharing clothes and a record collection, utterly dedicated to the sound they conjured up in 1984 and after. They recount growing tired of Alan McGee's revelling in the chaos of the early gigs, the contentious statements and violence at the gigs but also the sheer excitement of it all happening and happening quickly in 1984/5. They also recognise the massive error they made in signing to Blanco Y Negro (a subsidiary of Warners, one of the biggest labels in the world) with whom they had constant friction, the label always trying to force 'world class producers' onto them. They regretted snubbing Rough Trade who would have been a much better fit.
At every step along the way, everything that happens seems to reconfirm their outsider status, the outsiders' outsiders. Jim recounts the numerous occasions his inability to make small talk or just relate to people scuppered encounters with the people who were in his favourite bands- The Cramps, The Ramones, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, the people who inspired him to pick up a guitar in the first place. They are all shunned, were rude to or avoided. When offered the chance to meet Lou Reed, the man whose first album, the Velvets' banana album, is the cornerstone in the Reid's world, he passes up and and goes away knowing he hasn't made a mess of it. The end comes live on stage in 1998, partway through a US tour, ill advisedly booked after the tortuous recording of the album that became Munki. There is a fistfight in a Transit van on the road in the US. Sometime before there was a disagreement about a bowl of nuts backstage. Both men at the end of the road as brothers and as a partnership.
By the time they reform in 2007 both men know that they need to reform to put the extremely messy break up to bed. They both look at it all candidly, William sometimes a little tongue- in- cheek, but both seem to have grown as people. It's conversational in tone, the result of writer Ben Thompson interviewing each Reid extensively and then painstakingly constructing it as a narrative. One thing that comes across strongly, amidst the forty years of arguments, drugs, booze, friction with record companies, the comings and goings of bandmates, riots and violence at the early gigs and seemingly never ending chaos that swirls around them, is their love of music- the seriousness of their task, of writing, recording and playing songs in exactly the way they want to. More power to them.
I found this on Youtube, a compilation of various Mary Chain TV appearances, shambolic miming, stumbling around on Top Of The Pops, a general sense of not giving a fuck but also giving a massive fuck, some blistering live performances too, ending with the band filmed live for the legendary Snub in 1990- a good way to spend thirty five Reid Bros minutes.
Apparently it's Sunday. It's difficult to tell what day it is at this time of year at the best of times, the period between Christmas and New Year, but it's been even harder this year. On Christmas Eve night I came with norovirus (I think) and have been wiped out ever since. I'll spare you the details but I was out of action all through the Christmas period. Lots of lovely food and drink in the kitchen and I've been on bread, water and rice. I can't remember the last time I had such an alcohol free Christmas but it would have been in the mid- 1980s.
Today's Sunday mix features the work of Bedford Falls Players aka Mark Cooper. It's fitting for this time of year, if a week or two late, because the town of Bedford Falls is the fictional setting for It's A Wonderful Life, the Christmas film everyone goes to at some point. Also, deeply shamefully and embarrassingly, BFP have released at least three great tracks this year and I missed all of them out of my end of year list last week, an oversight for which I can only apologise. In any sane 2024 list the tracks Agent Cooper Coffee Dreams, Beautiful Chaos and Cosmic Cascade would all feature strongly.
Bedford Falls Players music is giddy and effervescent, the spirit of late 80s and 90s dance music filtered through dub and techno with a real life affirming quality, a bounce and musicality that makes it ajoy to listen to. Mark's remixes of other people, three contained below, are always outstanding too. In fact, his remixes of Matt Gunn's Learning Through Loops was one of my favourite tracks of 2023 so how I missed his music from this year's list is beyond me. All of the BFP back catalogue can be bought at Bandcamp.
Marmite Marimba is from the Three EP, a 2023 release. It starts out buzzing, like a machine glitching, and then the marimba melodies start to pick away on top. It rises and falls, rises and falls, stuttering bass and keys sliding in and out, crunching drums piling in, repeating itself but always shifting too. Lovely stuff. The BFP remix of Matt Gunn's Learning Through Loops is from the same EP. Almost exactly a year ago I said this about it- 'a gorgeous Balearic tune with squelchy bass, chuggy drums and a guitar part that sounds like something John Squire put down on tape at Battery Studios back in early 1989 when recording the Stone Roses debut lp and then never used. Over the top of this Mark has laid a vocal sample taken from TV, a voice talking about sound waves, binary problems in quantum systems, core computers, voodoo, 'shit like this', hidden variables, time travel, determinism, party tricks and the voice of Jesus. It's been played constantly round here, one of my favourite tracks of 2023, and you should all get on it'. I have no reason to change any of that one year later.
Railton Ruckus is by Rude Audio, one of several remix exchanges between the two parties. Railton Road is/ was the front line in Brixton and was the title track of a 2021 Rude Audio EP. The BFP signature sounds, marimbas and percussion carrying the melodies working their way through it and then everything dropping out for dub space and timbales, Weatherall and Nicolson style c.1991.
Boatface is by Duncan Gray from 2022. The BFP remix is a wonky Buzz Aldrin and the Beastie Boys sampling joy that could go on twice as long and not be too long.
Agent Cooper Coffee Dreams came out earlier this year, Kyle MacLachlan goes cosmic disco, some Twin Peaks chords and a rattling drum machine.
Cosmic Cascade is also from 2024, a nine minute ride into the cosmos with chunky drums, wobbly bass and twinkling, interstellar keys and synths.
Beautiful Chaos (Dub Mix) came out in March '24, a tune that builds and builds, piano, keys, acid squiggles, washes of synth and more of those twinkling synths Mark does so well. The drop out at five minutes, sampled voice and then bass re- entry is worth the price of admission alone. It is stratospherically good and clearly should have been in my singles of 2024 list, somewhere towards the top end. My bad, as they say.
A week ago, the Thursday before Christmas, Chris Massey's Sprechen label celebrated a successful year with an evening of DJs and bands at Yes. Yes is a great venue, situated on Charles Street, a stone's throw from the old Factory offices in one direction and the old BBC Oxford Road studios in the other- but, crucially, relying on none of the nostalgia that some parts of Manchester drape themselves in. Yes has a ground floor bar and several gig spaces. In the past few years ACR and Sonic Boom have both played upstairs. Chris held Sprechen's gig in the basement, a room that probably holds a hundred people. Psychederek was on the decks with his bag of comische tunes, followed by Mike Grubert's band Love Letters From Space, a psychedelic space rock four piece.
Chris' group The Thief Of Time have grown through 2023 and '24. The album, Where Do I Belong?, was one of last year's highlights, a summation of all of Chris' loves and life- clubs, music, comics, cult films, cosmiche synths and mid- 80s electronic indie pop- with some beautiful songs. The Thief Of Time's live outings have included gigs at Yard in Cheetham Hill and in November at The Golden Lion, Todmorden. With each gig, they've taken bigger steps and filled out, the line up expanding to include the leopard skin clad guitarist Mike and now keys/ co- vocals Lady Lady, plus at Yes, vocals from Bay Bryan on one of the songs.
Chris is centre stage, singing, playing synth drums and keys/ synths. They play the whole of Where Do I Belong?, Imposter Syndrome sounding especially good, the vocal sample kicking things off, 'It was as though I had no place in the world', before the mid 80s New Order gone to Cologne keyboard parts achieve lift off and Bryan's vocals surf on top
The influence of early 80s forward thinking pop, stuff that came out of the post- punk underground and then went pop such as The Human League, is strong, as is the ever present thud of club music and Manchester's past although this is absolutely not a Manchester revival thing in any way. Rendezvous For A Lost World throbs in Moroder- esque fashion with blissed out vocals, the clean lines of 80s sci fi brought to life in a basement in December. After that, there are a trio of new songs which promise that next year for Sprechen will bring more and bigger still (see also the album from Causeway that is scheduled for release early '25).
Where Do I Belong? can be found to listen to and buy at Bandcamp.
On Christmas Eve news of the death of Alfredo Fiorito started to come through via social media and an outpouring of remembrances, thanks and sorrow for a man who did as much as any to change the musical culture in the 1980s and afterwards. Alfredo may not be a household name but he was very much a person who, playing records in Ibiza in a time before it became what it is today, altered the landscape.
Alfredo left Argentina in 1976, fleeing the military junta who were responsible for thousands of left wing and counter- culture figures being disappeared (murdered). He pitched up in Madrid and then Ibiza where he got a job collecting glasses and serving drinks at Amnesia, a club with an open air dance floor where partygoers could dance under the stars until the following day. He saw the twin turntables and mixer and after a bit of playing around, instinctively understood the power of playing music and mixing tracks into one another. He took on the role of Amnesia's DJ and began to play a mixture of records he liked that took the revellers on a journey, in his own words' telling a story with music'. 80s pop, soft rock, leftfield indie, Belgian New Beat, the nascent house music records, reggae, disco, funk, electro- a seamless blend of music united by not much more than Alfredo's ears and the heady euphoria of mid- 80s Ibiza.
Amnesia and Ibiza was a playground- working class British kids rubbed shoulders with Italian princesses and pop stars, locals and holiday makers. The lack of snobbery in the playlist was reflected on the dance floor. At least, so I'm told.
This played a key part in inventing acid house in the UK. One of the versions of the acid house origin story is that four London DJs visited Amnesia and when they returned to London, they were determined to do what Alfredo was doing in Amnesia but in London. Danny Rampling, Paul Oakenfold, Nicky Holloway and Johnny Walker took Alfredo's spirit and record collection and created London's acid house scene. People from the north will give you a different version of the birth of acid house but there's no doubt that Alfredo gave the four London DJs a vision under the stars at Amnesia that they took home with them.
In 2022 Jezebell (Darren Bell and Jesse Fahnestock) released a track called Jezebellearica, Alfredo's voice put centre stage in an eight minute tribute to the man, with soft drums, washes of synth, nods to various 80s songs, and Alfredo talking about music, the role of the DJ, freedom, the all ages, mixed race crowd, 'real nightlife people' and how that to make people dance 'you have to tell them a story'. Find it here.
By the late 80s Alfredo's DJ sets incorporated a range of records that didn't necessarily seem like they had much in common but worked together as a whole, repurposing tracks. British indie bands that didn't quite fit into the NME/ Melody Maker controlled indie world at home found themselves rapturously received under the night skies at Amnesia- The Woodentops, Fini Tribe, Nitzer Ebb and Thrashing Doves (Jesus On The Payroll is below) all found a place in Alfredo's sets along with oddball, reclusive avant garde types from the USA such as The Residents (Kaw Liga is below).
The anything goes spirit of Alfredo's Amnesia sets is very much something that influenced me, at several degrees of separation- I never went to Amnesia, never danced under the stars or sat at the Cafe Del Mar at sunset but what happened there filtered through and the way that walls came down in the late 80s, the blurring of genres and boundaries, affected a lot of us hugely. Over at Ban Ban Ton Ton you can read an interview Dr Rob did with Alfredo in 2014 where Alfredo took us through a Top 25 Amnesia Classics. Read it here.
Alfredo had a stroke in 2021 and had been unwell ever since. Several times online fund raisers were set up to help pay for his care and rehabilitation. When he died, aged 71, his reputation as The Father of the Balearic Beat had long since been established, the sounds he played and records he selected forty years ago sending ripples out into the world. RIP Alfredo.
A Certain Ratio have had quite a year. They put out one of 2024's best albums, It All Comes Down To This, an album as good as any in their back catalogue. They followed it with a standalone 7" single, Clockwork Orange, in July and a limited edition vinyl only live recording of the band playing at Kendall Calling, the band playing at Tim Burgess' Tim Peaks Diner, a career spanning nine song album. In mid- December released a new four track 12"/ digital EP called Christmasville. The EP came with a brand new song, Now And Forever, ACR's song for Christmas, and three new remixes, all of which take the ACR sound into new places.
Jane Weaver's rework of Where You Coming From is a cosmische/ analogue synth psyche delight. Emperor Machine remixes Out From Under into a nine minute electronic funk workout. Jezebell take the third remix slot- Jezebell and ACR hooked up via Martin Moscrop finding a copy of Jezebell's Jezebalearic Beats Vol. 1 album while record shopping in Berlin and approaching Jesse and Darren. Jezebell's Ghost Train Mix of We All Need is six minutes of smouldering electro/ Balearica, dance floor beats, menacing bass and swirling FX. The bright orange vinyl has all gone but you can get the digital here.
A Certain Ratio weren't finished for the year with the Christmasville EP though. On Monday they put out their gig at New Century Hall in Manchester on 17th May as a live album, all of It All Comes Down To This played live in front of a home crowd (including me). You can find It All Comes Down To This Live St New Century here. I'm assuming that's the end of 2024's ACR activity but there's still five days to go, so who knows, anything could happen.
A Christmas gift for Christmas Day. This popped up on Bandcamp on the evening of 23rd December, an instant hit for me. DJ Jon Carter (Monkey Mafia and Heavenly Social) has done an edit/ remix (or R.E.M. ix) of the song known as Eleventh Untitled Song, the final song on R.E.M.'s 1989 album Green, transforming it into a beautiful Balearic/ electronic disco tune, with Michael Stipe and Mike Mills' vocals over a brand new track, retitled They Love You. It's as Christmassy as you like, not tinsel and schmaltz, but joyous disco love. Find it at Bandcamp. All proceeds will go to help the homeless in January, the coldest month of the year.
'This light is here to keep you warm/ This song is here to keep you strong/ I made a list/ Of things to say/ But all I really want to say is/ Hold her and keep him strong/ While I'm away from here'
Here's the 1989 original, a song they added to the end of Green with Bill and Peter swapping instruments, and the song unlisted on the sleeve.
I've avoided Christmas music here this year largely but today I thought I'd treat you to an ambient mix for Christmas Eve. I said last week that for me ambient music and found sounds do carry a very wintry and Christmassy feel- the half heard conversations and hum of background noise of shops and pubs, bells and drones, and the constant half dusk of December. This mix is all of that, mostly ambient, and a little bit more.
Pandit Pam Pam: Equipe Exploratoria Papai Natal III
Pye Corner Audio: Get Thee Behind Me Santa
Pye Corner Audio releases new music onto his Bandcamp page monthly, ambient/ drone/ acid tracks that are free/ pay what you want. Martyn Jenkins (Mr Pye Corner Audio) has recorded four Christmas tracks, all included in this mix, the opening three forming a long slow ambient fade in and the fourth a long slow drone fade out. It's worth noting that Omnichord Omnishambles was PCA's Christmas 2020 track, the omnishambles being a reference to the then chaotic government of Boris Johnson and the bewildering, populist, bullshit decision making of the government during Covid and Christmas in 2020.
Durutti Column's One Christmas For Your Thoughts is from 1981 and a compilation called Chansons Noel on Crepescule (along with other early 80s post- punk heroes such as Aztec Camera, Paul Haig, Simon Topping and Cabaret Voltaire). Vini and his guitar never sounded better.
Saint Etienne's Xmas 2021 EP was a four track CD only release that followed hot on the heels of their I've Been Trying To Tell You album. Lillehammer is a gorgeous wintry instrumental, named after the Norwegian ski resort which hosted the 1994 Winter Olympics. The lead song on the single was Her Winter Coat, Pete and Bob's music a low key, mini- winter epic, synths and sleigh bells, and Sarah in spoken word mode.
The Vendetta Suite is Gary Irwin from Belfast, a veteran of the city's acid house scene. In 2021 he released an album called The Kempe Stone Portal with Christmas In Cologne on it, a song that first appeared in 2019's The Wheel Turns EP. Cosmische Christmas.
Pandit Pam Pam is from Sao Paulo, Brazil. He released an album this year which should have made yesterday's list and an EP that did, plus his third Christmas release. The Natal III EP also contains a ten minute long track that should have been on this mix but I wanted to keep it to forty minutes, the brilliantly titled Santa Crying And Depressed On 26th Because He Is Concerned About The Coming Years, As He Is Technically An Illegal Immigrant And The Political Landscape Is Changing. You can find that here.
The end of year list is a bit of an indulgence but also a good way to look back, revisit albums and songs and enjoy again the music that's made my year. People like lists. The exact positions are very arbitrary. What does it matter if I think something was the 26th or 27th best album of the year? It doesn't. But pulling together my favourite releases of the calendar year is always a fun thing to do and a good way to draw a line under the year. Last year I wrote a massive piece with multiple sections, categories, sub- categories and sub- lists, the total number of releases heading up towards three figures. I must have had more time to think about it and to write it last year than I do now. This year I've slim- lined it to two lists, one for albums and one for singles/ EPs/ remixes, each numbering thirty.
Some years feel like singles years and some feel like album years- 2024 has been a big year for albums, some big hitters and 80s/ 90s bands and artists with big comebacks. I like to think I keep up with new music to some extent and the number of 'old' artists in this list makes me wonder how accurate that is, whether I'm kidding myself about that. But, as they say, it is what it is. Inevitably I will have missed something out from one of these two lists, if not both. Equally inevitably, I will buy an album in the new year that came out in 2024 which should have been in the top 30. Nothing is ever fixed. Maybe that's the way it should be, a constantly fluid and shifting list.
Singles, EPs and remixes
30 Silvertooth: Shut Um Down (A Dub From Outer Space)
29 The Liminanas and Bertand Belin: J'Adore Le Monde
28 Richard Norris: Weatherall's Last Stand
27 Jezebell: Weekend Machines EP
26 Causeway: Dancing With Shadows
25 Hinds with Grian Chatten: Stranger
24 David Harrow and Hugo Nicolson: Revolvalution EP and Rude Audio Remixes
23 Cole Odin and Marshall Watson: Voyager
22 Mick Harvey: When We Were Beautiful And Young
21 Electric Blue Vision: Trance Stance
20 BTCOP: The Custom 88 EP and Rude Audio Remixes
19 Mildlife: Return To Centauri
18 Puerto Montt City Orchestra: Hey You (10:40 Remix)
17 Pandit Pam Pam: Pass A Wish EP
16 Theis Thaws: Fly To Ceiling (David Holmes Remix)
15 Ammomite: You Don't Know Me (David Holmes Remix)
14 Ride: Last Frontier
13 C.A.R.: Anzu (Hardway Bros Remixes)
12 Acid Klaus: PTSD By Proxy EP
11 Raxon: Your Fault
10 Peak High: Dance Hall Days
9 Psychederek: Alt! EP
8 Iraini Mancini: Undo The Blue (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- animation)
7 Lisa Moorish: Sylvia (David Holmes Remix)
6 A Certain Ratio: It All Comes Down To This
5 Galliano: Cabin Fever Dub
A limited edition 7" single that was a very timely release with its line, 'don't want to take my country back man/ Want to take my country forwards', arriving to coincide with the Farage race riots in the summer, Galliano making a return to action and being a voice of reason. The song sampled Andrew Weatherall's remix of the band from 1992's Skunk Funk and borrowed Joe Strummer's vocal phrasings from This Is Radio Clash, and was a very unexpected treat.
4 Amyl and The Sniffers: Big Dreams
As was this, a single ahead of the Melbourne pub punk's third album that showed a different side to the band. Over a picked, circling guitar riff and some spacious production Amy sang a punk rock torch song for all those people stuck in dead end towns and dead end jobs amid a cost of living crisis who want to get out and realise they're another year older and still stuck. The video for Big Dreams, with the band on motorbikes in the desert, was pure rock 'n' roll cool.
3 Alex Kassian: E2- E4 (A Reference To E2- E4 By Manuel Gottsching)/ Mad Professor remixes
Twelve minutes and twenty one seconds of perfection- pulsing spaced out synths lines that lit up the summer. Not that summer really happened in the north of the UK this year. But when E2- E4 played it felt like it did.
2 Orbital, David Holmes, DJ Helen and Mike Garry: Tonight In Belfast
Tonight In Belfast, Mike Garry's beautifully moving poem and voice over David Holmes' remix of Orbital's Belfast, a re- imagining of the Hartnoll brothers 1991 masterpiece is as good as anything else released this yea. It could easily be my number one. David remixed Belfast for the Orbital 30 project, updating it for the 2020s. DJ Helen got Mike Garry to speak his Tonight poem over the top. Mike's words speak to me in all sorts of ways. When I first heard it, so many of the lines for me were about Isaac, it seemed almost like he'd written it for me. Transcendent and emotional, everything music can/ should be. Magical.
'Tonight I want to paint pictures of you/ Write poems and songs and novels all about you/I wanna hold you up so high you're gonna need a spacesuit'
'I love to speak your name aloud/ Simply 'cos I love its sound/ It feels like I'm kinda calling yer/ It feels like I'm kinda talking to ya/ It feels like I'm trying to break through/ You know across this divide'
'I'll tell you what/ Let's slip beyond the confines of this world/Let's forget every single thing we've learned/ Let's rewrite the way this world can turn'
1 Fat White Family: Bullet Of Dignity (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- Animation)
This came out in June, a 12" remix of one of the songs from Fat White Family's latest album Forgiveness Is Yours. The Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Remix takes Bullet Of Dignity, already a fucked up, sordid and groovy number and spins it further, kicking off with percussion, timbales, early 90s kick drum and then a squelchy bassline that oozes dance floor action. It builds, echoes rattling around and the rhythm gathering steam, some piano stabs and then finally, after a drop out and pause, Lias' vocal comes in, a blur of standout lines and attention grabbing phrases- 'You say you're just thirty one/ What's that in cannibal years?' I have no idea what it's about but it keeps giving with imagery, lines about fatal caricatures and suicidal cassettes, words walking in pairs, and how the dialogue's dubbed. There's a Middle Eastern/ North African guitar line that appears and re- appears. At five minutes it takes off even further, the groove and rhythms bouncing around, moving ever forwards.
There are a couple of singles that should really be heading up the singles list but they're both going to appear as part of the albums near the top end of this second list, as much for variety as anything.
Albums
Edit: I've forgotten to include any of 100 Poems brilliant trio of albums from this year- I knew I'd forget something! Out of the three the most recent, Balearic As A System Of Belief, just about edges it. Album number 31.
30 The Jesus And Mary Chain: Glasgow Eyes
29 Fat White Family: Forgiveness Is Yours
28 Reverb Delay: The Storm Has Passed
27 SubDan: Inhale, Exhale, Repeat
26 Duncan Gray: Five Fathoms Full
25 Saint Etienne: The Night
24 Richard Norris: Oracle Sound Volume Three
23 Khruangbin: A La Sala
22 Mick Head and The Red Elastic Band: Loophole
21 The Woodentops: Fruits Of the Deep
20 Dirt Bogarde: Love, Sweat And Beers
19 M- Paths: Submerge
18 Coyote: Hurry Up And Live
17 Klangkollektor: Dub Tapes Volume 1
16 Various Artists: Virtual Dreams Volume II (Ambient Explorations In The House And techno Age, Japan 1993- 1999
15 David Holmes: Blind On A Galloping Horse Remixes
14 Fontaines DC: Romance
13 Richard Sen: India Man
12 A Certain Ratio: It All Comes Down To This
11 J- Walk: Broken Beauty
10 Five Green Moons: Moon One
9 Sedibus: Seti
8 Underworld: Strawberry Hotel
7 Four Tet: 3
6 Jamie Xx: In Waves
5 The Cure: Songs Of A Lost World
I had no idea, along with thousands of other people I imagine, that what I really needed in late 2024 was a new album from The Cure. The opener, Alone, released as a single in the autumn, was an exercise in majestic beauty and beautiful gloom, a three minute instrumental intro and then Robert Smith singing as well as he ever has, about life, love, loss, mortality, and 'the end of every song we sing'. Stunning. The album continued in that vein for the next seven songs, meditations on aging and loss, ending inevitably with Endsong.
4 GLOK/ Timothy Clerkin: Alliance
Electronics and guitars, swirling, woozy modern psychedelia recorded remotely after the pair met at Andrew Weatherall's funeral. A collision of early 90s sounds and 2024 trippiness. For some time it was all I played, a totally addictive seven track album.
3 Bill Ryder- Jones: Iechyd Da
This could easily be album of the year, a January release that I keep returning to. Beautiful songs with acoustic guitars, pianos and grand, sweeping strings, a children's choir from a Birkenhead primary school, Mick Head reading Ulysses, a Gal Costa sample, and amazing stirring production- and then Bill's battered and beaten voice, sounding like a man who's reached the end of the road, has nowhere left to go, broken. The pain he sings about is from experience, the death of his brother as a child (Daniel fell off a cliff while they pair where on holiday, his family forever scarred) and mental health issues ever since.
In the end though he gets there and we do with him- 'I'm still lost/ But I know love/ I know loss/ But I chose love'.
2 Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds: Wild God
Wild God was a step into the light, a conscious decision by Nick Cave to choose joy over sorrow- a line that appears in the song Joy where Nick is visited late at night by a ghost, a boy with giant sneakers and laughing stars around his head, who tells him, 'we've all had too much sorrow/ now is the time for joy'. It shakes me when I hear it.
By this song, the fourth on the album, its clear we've stepped into a new Cave world. The first song, Song Of The Lake, explodes orchestrally Nick muttering 'never mind, never mind...'. It's follow by Wild God, with its heart stopping cry of 'bring your spirit down'. That is followed by Frogs, easily one of the best songs of this year and one of Cave's best, a song where Nick walks home on a Sunday in the rain, amazed at the wonders of the world around him- frogs in the gutter, the rain, Kris Kristofferson. The band sound reborn too. The previous albums were so grief stricken and spectral it was difficult for them to find a way in, Warren Ellis's synths were the core of the sound. Final Rescue Attempt tells of Nick being saved by a woman, and how after that, 'nothing really hurt again/ nothing ever really hurt/ not even real pain'. It's extraordinary stuff, magical, life affirming songs. By the end of side two, when former partner Anita Lane's voice appears (from Nick's answer phone. She died in 2021), we've gone through the wringer and come out the other side, the sheer joie de vivre evident throughout, no more so than in the fade out to Conversion where Nick and the choir sing/ shout, 'Stop! You're beautiful!', at each other.
Both Frogs and Wild God could have been near the top end of the singles list- I've not listened to any songs more than either of those two all year- but now they're fully part of the album as a whole, an album that when I put it on, I play all the way through and one I imagine I'll still be playing long into the future.
1 Various Artists: Sounds From The Flightpath Estate
What else could it be? I did wonder whether I could/ should put the album me, Martin, Dan, Mark and Baz pulled together into my list, if doing it was a bit much. But in the end, it has been the album of the year for me. This time last year we were receiving tracks from the artists we'd approached, music from Justin Robertson, David Holmes, Timothy J Fairplay, Richard Sen, Hardway Bros, Sons Of Slough, Rude Audio and 10:40. Andy Bell's cover of Smokebelch arriving at the last minute was the cherry on top. An unreleased Two Lone Swordsmen track too.
We knew we had something good, all the music was so strong, everyone had really responded so well to us (a bunch of unknowns let's be honest). But we did not expect what then happened. Selling out 500 vinyl copies in a day. Repressing 500 more and selling all of them too. Three of the tracks being played on Lauren Laverne's 6 Music show. Having the window display in Piccadilly Records.
Giving a copy to Paul Simonon at The Golden Lion was as memorable and surreal as anything else that happened in 2024. Appearing in two end of year lists (Piccadilly records and Uncut). All of it has been unreal and yet, there it is, it happened. It would have been nothing without the music though- from the chunky cosmic chug of Sons Of Slough (recorded live at The Golden Lion) to Tim Fairplay's centurion dub, Justin's weird folk/ dub collision and Richard Sen's massive sounding Tough On Chug, Tough On The Causes Of Chug, the dub techno of Rude Audio and 10:40's fairground swirl, Hardway Bros writing our own theme, Theme For Flightpath Estate, and Holmes' magnificent Human: Remains, to Andy's gorgeous cover of Smokebelch, it's a brilliant and beautiful thing and it's my album of the year. To everyone involved, all the artists, my Flightpath friends, Waka, Gig and Matt at the Golden Lion and GLS, Andrew Liles, Rusty for his incredible sleeve art, and the memory of Andrew Weatherall (for whom it is a tribute)- thank you.
On Saturday 6th December The Flightpath Estate DJ team were fortunate enough to be playing support to David Holmes, another excursion to The Golden Lion in Todmorden. On this occasion the team was myself, Martin and Dan, starting out at 3pm and going through until 9pm when David took over. We took i tin turns playing in batches of threes (occasionally fours, sometimes twos and as time ticked on one on, one off). We never take this for granted and are genuinely honoured and grateful to be asked to play. The pub started to fill up late afternoon and we had an audience by the time evening arrived. The set wasn't recorded live but we've done our best to recreate it (copious note making while DJing by some, working from memory by others) and you can listen to the full six hours and eleven minutes at Mixcloud.
If I do say so myself, I think we played some pretty good records and sequenced them pretty well too. The tracklist is below, a set that starts out with The Pogues and ends six hours later with Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve's remix of Ulysses by Franz Ferdinand, a track that David smothered in dub effects and slowed right down so he could take over. Later on he was joined by Michelle McKenzie and the pair took the roof off- David always does at The Lion.
Adam
[0:00] The Pogues - Summer In Siam
[5:00] Arthur Russell - In The Light Of The Miracle
[18:00] World Of Twist - She’s A Rainbow
[22:00] Planet 4 Folk Quartet - Message To Crommie
Dan
[25:00] Saint Etienne - Only Love Can Break Your Heart (A Mix Of Two Halves)
[34:00] Hoodie x James K - Scorpio
[41:00] Sault - We Are Gods
Martin
[46:00] Saiko Tsukamoto - Higher Than The Sun (Being Borings Remix Demo)
[51:00] Minotaur Shock - It All Levels Out
[56:00] Andrew Wasylyk & Tommy Perman - Communal Imagination
Adam
[59:00] Klangkollektor - Midnight Express
[1:05:00] Lark - Can I Colour In Your Hair (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
[1:09:00] Electric Blue Vision - Other Skies (Hardway Bros Meets Monkton Uptown Version)
Dan
[1:16:00] Andrew Weatherall - Youth Ozone Machine
[1:20:00] Autumns - Purely Reasonable
[1:23:00] Bill Laswell - Nonmatter
Martin
[1:27:00] Boozoo Bajou - Re-Tuff
[1:29:00] Coreysan - Heavy Load (Nina Walsh Remix)
[1:36:00] Antoni Maiovvi - Glyph
Adam
[1:39:00] Five Green Moons - Spider Dub
[1:44:00] Totem Edits - 12 Feel
[1:51:00] Coyote - Habitual Illusions
Dan
[1:56:00] Bill Frisell - 1968
[2:00:00] David Holmes - Rodney Yates
[2:06:00] Frankie & The Heartstrings - Fragile
Martin
[2:12:00] Subway - Persuasion
[2:18:00] DJ Oil - Addis
[2:25:00] The Aloof - Never Get Out The Boat (The Flying Remix)
Adam
[2:31:00] Grinderman- Palaces Of Montezuma
[2:34:00] Fontaines D.C.- ‘Cello Song
[2:39:00] Spacemen 3- Big City (Everybody I Know Can Be Found Here)
{Dan}
[2:49:00] Scientists Of Sound - Step On Stage (Underdog Remix Instrumental)
[2:54:00] Bootman - To The Hip
[2:59:00] Rek Shit Rebulz - Bounce (To The Beat)
[3:01:00] Bedford Falls Players - Cosmosapien Revisited (The Long Champs Remix)
The 21st December is the winter solstice. After today, it starts getting a little lighter every day. It may not be noticeable tomorrow but in a month or two it will. Something that is always worth noting I think.
In 2006 Rough Trade celebrated a significant birthday by releasing a double CD compilation titled The Record Shop: 30 Years Of Rough Trade Shops. Across the two CDs, packaged in an expensive looking hardback book complete with dust cover and sixty pages of text and photos, were a wide range of leftfield and alternative music- thirty songs chosen by thirty different Rough Trade and adjacent people, from Geoff Travis to james Murphy, Daniel Miller and Seymour Stein to Jon Savage, Bjork and Jeff Barrett. Bobby Gillespie, Thurston Moore, Jarvis Cocker, Stewart Lee, Ana Da Silva and Erol Alkan all get selections, as Rough Trade punters. In the book it says that the selectors are all Rough Trade customers, and asked to choose a favourite record from the 30 years before 2006 and a memory or tale to go with it. As a result, it's wildly inconsistent as a listen but great fun and does actually sound like what a proper record shop staffed by obsessives could sound like on a busy Saturday if everyone got one go on the instore stereo.
The songs include late 70s punk cuts from The Modern Lovers, Swell Maps, The Mekons, Blue Orchids and The Rezillos, 80s indie from Mighty Mighty, Bongwater and Pixies, 90s alt from Bikin Kill, Stereoloab and Matmos and 00s randoms such as SchneiderTM vs Kpt. Michi. Gan's cover of The Smihths, The Carter Family and James Luther Dickinson and LCD Soundsystem. I've cherry picked four tracks, two from each disc, more or less randomly with two artists who have never appeared at Bagging Area before.
Holger Czukay's Persian Love is from 1979 and was chosen by Don Letts. The Can man is in fine form on this track, sampling Iranian singers from short wave radio while his bass bumps along underneath, with a guitar line and some percussion. It's all rather lovely and sounds very contemporary, it could easily be slipped into an afternoon DJ set.
Erol Alkan picked The Power Of Lard by Lard, a 1988 song from Ministry's Al Jourgenson with Paul Barker and Jeff Ward. Late 80s US Industrial rock that hit deep with the skateboarding crowd.
Gary Walker, the founder of Wiija Records, chose Bikini Kill's Capri Pants, a song that first appeared in the 1996 as a US import single, a period when punk was revitalised and kicking in all directions. Kathleen Hanna and Bikini Kill sound cool as fuck on Capri Pants, buzzsaw guitars, crashing cymbals and white hot vocals.
Lastly, Jeff Barratt's choice. As founder of Heavenly Records Jeff knows his musical onions and he plumped for Karen Dalton and a 1969 song re- issued in 1997, folk blues of the sort that, as Jeff says in the sleeve notes, 'you ain't never going to hear on the radio- word of mouth is the only way'. Word of mouth and record shops.
Let's end the working week, the last full week before the Christmas holiday, and the end of the school term with some more new music- both electronic but with a world of difference between them. First is a track from M- Paths who I first encountered at Mighty Force, with a really impressive pair of albums. This new one is self- released, a four minute burst of Aphex Twin inspired ambient electro/ techno called Shapes and Patterns that has rapid, rattling drums, dancing synths and repetitive melodic passages interrupted by bursts of bass, the music never settling for long but constantly twisting and turning.
Out today on the ever wonderful Tici Taci is a new EP from Jack Butters, an original called Floor Burner and a pair of remixes. The vocal sample, 'I think it's time to make the floor burn', should leave no one in any doubt about why this track exists. Drums and synths judder and chug, the bassline descends, wobbly FX fire off all over the place.
The remixes come from Rule Six and The Time Machine Drop Outs. Rule Six go for the low slung, slow burn, the bassline pumping on as the synths and FX glitter around it. Time Machine Drop Outs are Matt Gunn (see yesterday's post) and Chad Jackson (of the Hacienda and hearing drummers getting wicked among other things). The tempo is low, the guitar is funky, the floor is burned.
Matt Gunn has appeared here before but in leftfield electronic/ cosmic chug/ psychedelic dub disco mode. In his youth Matt played in guitar bands and it turns out there are occasions when the rock 'n' roll juices flow, the guitars get plugged in, the amps turned up and jams are kicked out. Last Friday Matt unleashed an album as The Matt Gunn Band into the festive hell of mid- December, an eight song slice of, as he puts it, 'songs about stuff using real instruments first, then tech', an album called Another Pleasant Valley Death Cult. The title alone should give you some idea of what to expect.
Ego To Go Go kicks in with a drummer counting us in and then raw and dirty fuzz bass, psyche rock guitar chords, summer of '69 vibes, ah ah ah backing vocals and then growly lead vox. The kind of guitar rock that 00s bands inspired by the Mary Chain made- Crocodiles and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club both spring to mind. Different League is funked up indie with a killer bassline. What Do You Think Of Me Now? channels The Cramps- in fact, Lux and Poison Ivy are never far away on Another Pleasant Valley Death Cult- but with 70s punk vocals. Testing One Two is looser and more experimental, more post- punk. Crushed comes in with a repeating organ riff, then crunchy drums and an indie dance feel, recalling both That Petrol Emotion and Big Audio Dynamite, if they'd come from Windsor. Infiltrator starts with synths, the sort of sound Matt produces more usually, but then diverts with a driving, propulsive throbbing bass, FXed vocals and a surf guitar solo. Full Of Lies is slowed down, the dub influences seeping in, FX and bleeps, the guitars not turning up until a couple of minutes in. Another Pleasant Valley Death Cult finishes with Shock Value, an eight minute epic, again riding in on synths and then a sneered vocal, 'take this...', as the bass and drums crunch about. Matt sings of AC/ DC and voltage running through him. The psyched out section, backwards guitars over thumping drums, is a joy, the song switching back and forth and then building for the last few minutes, guitars, synths, FX, drums, throbbing bass, a hefty dose of the experimental early 90s indie/ guitar bands fed through dance remixes and producers reconstituted for late 2024. You can listen and buy at Bandcamp.
Not long ago Matt released some cosmic chug for Tici Taci, a three track EP called The Ringmakers Of Saturn. I wrote about it here- and need no excuse to repost this Simon Sheldon and Monkton remix, a wonderful piece of skanking sci fi dub.
