The Way I Feel Is Like A Robin

The Totem Edit Bandcamp page is a treasure trove of delights, edits of a wide range of songs by Leo Zero and Justin Deighton. This one has been hitting the spot recently, six minutes of Balearic dancefloor folk called Feel. Free/ name your own price here. You'll thank me. I've been hitting play endlessly. 

Feel is a 2024 edit of The Way I Feel by Gordon Lightfoot, from Gordon's album, Lightfoot! in 1966. The guitar playing is beautiful, and Gordon's lyrics tell a story of loss- 'The way I feel is like a robin/ Whose babes have flown to come no more/ Like a tall oak tree along and crying/ When the birds have flown and the nest is bare'.

The Way I Feel

I have developed a thing about robins. The one above was photographed while we were queueing for a ride at Alton Towers back in March, just sitting there along side us. Robins have been associated with the dead for centuries. Some people think that robins appear to bring messages from the dead, that they are messengers between the living and the dead. I don't know if I was aware of this before Isaac died but I've become aware of it since. The idea that Isaac would choose to reveal himself to us in the form of a sweet little robin redbreast seems a little unlikely and I'm a pretty rational person. But when I see one, I think of him and it makes me smile. We saw one in the hedge at the cemetery once which was a bit of a moment. There was one that lived in the tree behind out garden in the spring. It often fluttered into our garden, zipping here and there, occasionally landing on the kitchen window sill, before flying back to the holly tree. 

One morning in April I was preparing for a job interview (I didn't get it, they appointed someone younger and cheaper, something that happened twice earlier this year), the robin sat on the sill while I was looking out. Later on, when I got out of my car at the interview, a robin was on the pavement looking in my direction (I know it wasn't the same robin- I told, you I'm a rational person). It's become a thing, like some other things have become things since Isaac died- the number 23 for one. I don't mind these things that have become things, in fact I like them. Anyway, all this is related loosely to today's post and Gordon Lightfoot's song about feeling like a robin and this photo of a robin which I've been saving since March for just such an opportunity. I didn't even make the connection between the song, the photo and robins until I started writing. Funny how that happens sometimes. 

Half Life

Three years ago Saint Etienne returned with an album called I've Been Trying To Tell You. It was largely well recieved but I think a bit of an opinion splitter too but I loved it- the album was steeped in the mists of memory and the recent past, based around the long gone optimism of the period 1997 to 2001. According to Bob Stanley it was about 'optimism, the late 90s and how memory is an unreliable narrator'. The songs are sample based, Pete Wiggs taking elements from unlikely sources from that time period- Natalie Imbruglia, Honeyz, Lighthouse Family, Samantha Mumba, Tasmin Archer and The Lightning Seeds- and combining them with found sounds and synths/ laptop programming. The songs are all drenched in a woozy haze, a slowness, fragments of a dream, a weird nostalgia for a period that feels disconnected from today despite being relatively recent. It also refused to draw any firm conclusions about that period- what was it? Were things getting better? Did it just feel that way because we were younger? 

Pond House

The album was followed by an Christmas EP, led by the magnificently wintry and melancholic Her Winter Coat. 

The EP also had this song, Lillehammer, an instrumental that takes the laptop ambience that forms the background to I've Been Trying To Tell You and breaks things further apart, the sound of dusk at 4pm in December. 

Lillehammer

Now Saint Etienne are about to release a new album, The Night, out this Friday. It's been preceded by a single, Half Life, which is the feel of the songs from I've Been Trying To Tell You and the Christmas EP but even more so. Half Life is less than two minutes long, an ambient Saint Etienne lost on the edge of town as darkness falls, far away from things. Sarah whispers. Washes of synth drift by. A mistreated piano plays an out of tune melody line. Bass bumps away slightly. On its own it floats by quickly, only just there. As part of an album I imagine it will be surrounded by similar songs, part of a late 2024 ambient Saint Etienne treat.

Monday's Long Song

Spacemen 3's Big City was released in January 1991, not long after the band broke up. Relations between Pete and Jason had grown increasingly strained and on the fourth and final Spacemen 3 album, Recurring, the two men had a side of the album each, barely even being in the studio at the same time. The sole song they appear on together is When Tomorrow Hits, a Mudhoney cover. Big City came in various lengths according to format and release- the album and 7" had a short, edited version, the 12" and CD singles had the longer eight and a half minutes one. And then there is this one, all glorious ten minutes and fifty one seconds of it

Big City (Everybody I Know Can Be Found Here)

Pete had been caught up in rave culture a little and the kick drum, throbbing bassline and synths all nod to acid house and dance music. Over the pulsing, blissed out music, and the psyche guitar line that runs through it, Pete whispers 'Big city/ Bright lights/ Cool people/ Everybody I know can be found here' and then 'let the good times roll', and most aptly, 'Waves of joy' and then finally, 'Yeah I love you too'. I played this song at The Golden Lion on Saturday afternoon- it sounded ace through the Lion's wonderful sound system. Later on, the pub packed out for David Holmes' latest appearance at the Lion, he played it too and with the volume pushed up for Saturday night and dancing, it sounded even better.

Forty Five More Minutes Of Blind On A Galloping Remix

Last Sunday's fifty minute mix of remixes of songs from David Holmes' Blind On A Galloping Horse album was well received and I promised a second volume. In an unplanned coincidence me, Dan and Martin played support to David at The Golden Lion yesterday afternoon, the third time we've warmed up for him and its a pleasure and honour every time. Heavenly commissioned and released so many Blind On A Galloping Horse remixes of that I could probably do a third volume. Given that I've still not included in either of these mixes the Rich Lane remix (which came about due to a connection made by a post at this blog), the Hardway Bros Meets Monkton remix and various others (Robin Wylie, Daniel Avery, Darren Emerson, Working Men's Club...), a volume three would seem to be the order of the day at some point. 

Last time I started slow, some ambient/ chilled remixes before ramping it up in the second half. This one kicks in quicker. Last time I didn't include any remixes of the same song- this time I have, both Yeah x 3 and Necessary Genius feature twice but I liked the way the two remixes of Yeah x 3 worked together and the Necessary Genius remixes are very different animals. 

Forty Five More Minutes Of Blind On A Galloping Remix

• Yeah x 3 (Sonic Boom and Panda Bear Reset Remix)
• Yeah x 3 (The Vendetta Suite Reason To Live Remix)
• Necessary Genius (Lovefingers Dub And Response)
• Too Muchroom (Hardway Bros Too Much Acid Dub)
• Stop Apologising (Cosmodelica Extended Mix)
• It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love (Lovefingers and Heidi Lawden High Tide Mix)
• Necessary Genius (Decius Remix)

Sonic Boom and Panda Bear's Reset album was a 60s pop/ psych bubblegum adventure, reworkings/ samples of 60s songs filtered through a 21st century bubblegum box of tricks. It was followed by an Adrian Sherwood dub of Reset that raised it up a notch. Sonic and Panda's version of Yeah x 3, the most 60s pop song on Blind On A Galloping Horse, is a whir of drum machine rhythms, layers of glassy psychedelia and Raven's space echo vocal on top. 

The Vendetta Suite is fellow Belfast producer/ DJ/ musician Gary Irwin. He remixed Yeah x 3 twice- the weightless ambient drift of Reason To Drift was on last's week mix. This one, the Reason To Live remix, is more direct, led by a pulsing bass and wall of synths. 

Lovefingers is Andrew Hogge, the owner of the ESP Institute label, a DJ, producer and promoter. His remix of Necessary Genius is a deep one, with rapid fire drums, pumped up bass and Raven's vocal chopped up and FXed, and a hypnotic, repeating piano line thunders away. David list of inspirations- Tony Wilson, Weatherall, Guy Stevens, Nina Simone, northern soul, Peter Meadon, rock 'n' roll, Rastafari, Bernadette Devlin, David Keenan, Sinead O'Connor and refugees among them- rattle by. 

The lyrics for Too Muchroom come from an Andrew Weatherall quote- 'if you're not living on the edge you're taking up too much room'. Andrew's influence is all over Blind On A Galloping Horse. There's a cover of Laugh Myself To Sleep from his unreleased second solo album (still unreleased due to a difference of opinion with engineer Steve Boardman who claimed co- writing credits and held the tapes/ hard drive hostage. Andrew's response was to say 'fuck him/ it' and move on, do the next thing. In a radio show he said he quite liked the idea of having an unreleased and legendary lost solo album. Appropriately Andrew's partner in The Asphodells, Tim Fairplay, played guitar on Laugh Myself To Sleep). Andrew's ALFOS partner Sean Johnston remixes Too Muchroom, one of several remixes Sean did of Galloping Horse songs. This one is exactly what it says it is- acid dub. The vocals are in there, twisted to pieces and just about audible. 

Cosmodelica is Colleen Murphy, New Yorker, DJ, producer and radio show host. Her Balearic Breakfast show and compilation albums are second to none. Her remix of Stop Apologising is like being dropped back into a scuzzy indie/ electro basement, dry ice and sticky floors, where the room smells of poppers and cigarettes and the crowd are ridiculously beautiful and elegantly wasted. 

Lovefingers makes a second appearance along with Heidi Lawden, and a remix of Its Over, If We Run Out Of Love, one of the songs that is the at the centre of Galloping Horse, heartbeat of the album. They did two, the Low Tide remix and this one, High Tide. Dark, repetitive acid disco. 

Necessary Genius returns for the ending, remixed by Decius, the London band made up of Fat White Family singer Lias Saoudi, brothers Liam and Luke May and Quinn Whalley from Warmduscher. Decius make brilliant, sweaty, sleazy, gay sauna acid house/ techno, tongues in cheeks, needles in the red and tempos pushed up high. They take Necessary Genius to its extreme here, the vocal reduced to staccato syllables and the drums galloping on and on. 

V.A. Saturday

As mentioned yesterday, Andrew Weatherall's Masterpiece is a king in the various artists world. The Masterpiece series comes out via Ministry Of Sound and has also featured compilations put together by Carl Craig, Giles Peterson , Goldie, Jazzie B, David Rodigan, Francoise K, Annie Nightingale and Fabio And Grooverider. Andrew's is an absolute joy, a masterclass in record selection, mixing and the art of pacing a set. There are two editions, one on vinyl and one on CD. 

The vinyl is much sought after now- the current asking price in Discogs starts at £150.00-, a twelve track, unmixed, triple disc version that starts with his remix of Grinderman's Heathen Child, has five further contemporary Weatherall remixes (Timothy J Fairplay, The Horrors, Woooden Shjips, Toddla T and Primal Scream's Uptown- at least two of these are all timers in the Weatherall remix pantheon). Alongside this he selects cuts from Andrew and Tim's Asphodells, Kaspar Bjork, Walls, Ajello, The Subs, Mario Vesta and an 80s indie/ dreampop classic from AR Kane, the song that gave his travelling cosmic disco its name- A Love From Outer Space. 

Masterpiece came out in 2012. ALFOS, the club night, started in 2010 (at The Drop, a basement in Stoke Newington). By 2012 Andrew and Sean had built a following, an ALFOS crew who travelled to Glasgow and Belfast for the nights out and the sound they were after had had time to develop, to brew. Masterpiece is a reflection of that, the 2012 ALFOS sound- a warm, embracing, inclusive, trippy,  cosmic disco, electro and dubby house records often pitched down to hit that 122 bpm sweet spot, 'an oasis of slowness in a world of increasing velocity', as Andrew put it. They played underground dance music alongside lost 80s gems, 70s krautrock, mid 80s Belgian New Beat, whatever tickled their musical fancy. Masterpiece is a six sides of vinyl/ three CD version of that. 

The three CD version goes further and deeper, three discs- Eleven O'Clock Drop, Twelve O'Clock Drop and One O'clock Drop (a nod to the lysergic adventures of his youth in Slough and Windsor and to his early 00s post- punk Nine O'Clock Drop compilation). The CD is perfection. Mixed live in his bunker. Andrew said at the time that if he made a mistake he had go back and start the entire mix over again. Thirty five tracks that in the truest sense of a DJ mix, take the listener on a journey. He was a one off. 

The vinyl was essential. The CD was too. I know some people* who decided against purchasing at the time because they didn't like the sleeve. I know people who bought both formats**. Here for your Saturday listening pleasure is one track from each of the three CDs, an eleven, twelve and one o' clock drop.

First, from disc one comes Walls, a London krautpop duo and a track from 2012 on German label Kompackt. On a perfectly judged and pitched disc, peppered with his own remixes and Apiento's The Orange Place (see yesterday's post) Walls slo- mo sci fi throb and distant vocal still stands out, Andrew's track selection never letting him down. 

Into Our Midst

From disc two this is Emperor Machine's remix of Sons And Daughters' Orion, Glasgow indie/ country punks Sons And Daughters fed through the cosmic blender by Emperor Machine for eleven minutes, a pulsating and intense with slowed down, slurred vocals.  

Orion (Emperor Machine Remix)

Finally, one from disc three and Toddla T's Watch Me Dance, guest vocals from Roots Manuva and remixed by Andrew himself. A truly deranged dance record. Pens with the thump of True Faith style drums, a robotic voice and then a huge, canal dredging bassline. Brain frying synth arpeggios flicker around, there are key changes, drops, echo- laden guitar chords, a female voice wailing 'oh, we have lost contoooool', and the sense of total dance floor mayhem. Released in the summer of 2011, Masterpiece became the only way to own this remix on vinyl after the warehouse the standalone 12s from that summer were stored in awaiting delivery went up in flames. It's not surprising- this record is too hot for a warehouse to contain it. Never let anyone tell you that remixes are not a valid artform.  

Watch Me Dance (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

* Hi Baz!

** Hi me!

Music For Warmer Climes

Friday 6th December. It doesn't get much less Balearic than northern England in early December, the same awful Christmas songs on rotation in every shop, pub and public place, dark all day and wet or cold- or wet and cold. Thankfully there are people out there releasing music to transport us from our wintry festive hell to somewhere much warmer. A Mediterranean round up for today, a trio of late 2024 Balearica transmissions.

We'll start with Cantoma and a single that came out at the end of November that has become a proper earworm for me. There were 250 hand numbered 7"  singles but alas they've all gone so it's digital only. First Nothing (Noche Espanola Remix) rumbles in with warm prodding bass and then some clipped, muted guitar notes, fluttering synths, long washes of synth chords, piano... It's a mid- tempo sundowner, the perfect shuffling, head nodding groove. On the flip Phil Mison provides an ambient mix, a gorgeous stripped back version. You can get both at Bandcamp. 

Over at Apiento's Bandcamp there's a new remix of his 2010 classic The Orange Place- it came out on vinyl in late November, the original version paired with Castro's Cosmic Orange Dub. You can get both digitally here. Castro's Cosmic Orange Dub is eight and a half minutes of downtempo Balearic splendour, ideal for home listening, a dubbed out version that gets quite intense, the rhythms picking up, FX swirling around and the eastern melody lines drifting in and out. The original mix is a much loved and much played track round these parts and was one I think I first heard on Andrew Weatherall's 2012 compilation Masterpiece (which hasn't featured in the Bagging Area V.A. Saturday slot yet but really should).

Lastly Mike Wilson's 100 Poems has lit up 2024 three times with a triptych of albums, all of which have featured at this blog. Today there's another new 100 Poems album, this one called Love because as Mike says 'love is what the world needs more than anything'. The album is out at Bandcamp today, a live album recorded at a showcase gig in Dublin in October. Mike released Song For Claire (Your Life Is Your Life) onto Soundcloud a few days ago- you can listen here. The song has taken on a new life for Mike since he recorded it as a tribute to a friend, Claire, who sadly died earlier this year. The words are from a Charles Bukowski poem called The Laughing Heart- 'Your life is your life/ Don't let it be clubbed into dank submission/ Be on the watch/ There are ways out/ There is light somewhere/ It may not be much light but/ It beats the darkness'. At this point in darkest December we could all do with a little light.  

Hey Joe! I Got The News Tonight

Pete Wylie's 1986 single Sinful is one of those records, one of those songs that is central to my musical DNA. It was the debut Pete Wylie single, the record company thinking that Pete's own name might lead to a hit rather than one of the increasing numbers of Wah! names Pete had used previously. You don't need me to tell you how great Sinful is or why it is. It just is. 

In the past I've posted the 12" mix, the Tribal Mix, a Zeus B Held production that thumps in for several minutes with widescreen production, throbbing bass, heartbeat kick drum synths, building and building and then sustaining the excitement . Today, here's the single mix, a song that reached number 13 in the UK charts. 

Sinful

A few days ago Pete posted a link to a newly discovered piece of film, Pete playing (miming) Sinful in Verona in 1986. Everything about this clip is a joy- Pete, Josie and the band in their black leather and big hair phase, an enormous stage with huge lighting rig, a packed to the rafters Roman colosseum of enthusiastic Italians clapping and waving, Josie's pop art guitar, the sense that everything is happening in some mid- 80s hyper- reality...

I'm a big fan too of the Sinful promotional appearance that took place on The Wogan Show in 1986, Pete giving it the full scouse rock star on early evening chat show vibes. A clip with fewer over- excited Italians but more dancing nuns. 

There Is No Authority But Yourself

I was too young to be into Crass during the time the band existed- I could have caught the tail end of them in 1983/4 I suppose but didn't. They were always a bit foreboding, the logo, the word Crass stencilled on the back of denim and leather jackets of hardcore mid/ late- 80s punks. Even the name Crass was unfriendly, standoffish, oppositional. During the 90s when a flush of books about punk were published I read about Crass and then began to explore the music a little, more so when the internet arrived in my house but I couldn't say I'm an expert. Whenever I read about them or see an interview with drummer/ vocalist Penny Rimbaud I find lots to enjoy and think about. Rimbaud always comes across as a very sorted, intelligent and interesting man, a poet, philosopher, writer, and performer. There's plenty to be interested in too- the anarcho- punk world they created and lived in, the experimentation, the use of tape collages and spoken word along with their highly abrasive punk music, their insistence on independence in regard to their record releases, the DIY culture, the tabloid hoaxes and obscenity/ blasphemy court cases are all more than enough to be going on with. Their politics (pacifism, feminism, anti- consumerism) are all very contemporary. They split up in 1984 (as they had said they would), released their final record in 1986 and shut their label down in 1992.

They've had an afterlife in the 21st century. In 2002 Crass Collective were part of the anti- Iraq war movement and members appeared at an event at the South Bank. Steve Ignorant performed The Feeding Of The 5000 in 2007 with a band. The albums were re- issued in 2010. Some of these things caused arguments and ructions, splits between former members and objections to releases and gigs. In 2011 Ignorant and Rimbaud appeared on stage together for the last time, playing Do They Owe Us A Living, the group coming full circle back to the start. In 2019 the double album compilation Best Before 1984 was given away free via their website, a twenty song album with a subsequent forty song CD release. 

In the summer I saw Richard Norris in conversation with Dave Haslam, an event to launch Richard's book Strange Things Are Happening. Richard had recently been on a hiking holiday in Spain with Penny Rimbaud and while walking and chatting Richard asked Penny, a wise man if ever there is one to be found, what the meaning of life is. Penny replied, 'To serve'. 

These songs are all from the free download of Best Before 1984, a small selection of Crass, a band who in some ways seem very much tied to the late 70s punk world and the highly charged politics of punk, free festivals, CND and communes of the early 80s but who are also a constant presence out on the fringes of culture, a band and idea that refuses to die.

This is from the start, 1977, Penny Rimbaud and Steve Ignorant fired up by seeing The Clash and the anarchist commune in Essex they'd both arrived at, a song they wrote and recorded as a drums and vocal duo. 

'Do they owe us a living? Course they fucking do'

Do They Owe Us A Living

This one has found sounds of railways, pounding drums, tinny guitars, edge of the seat vocals and lyrical bite. 

Shaved Women

This is a 1982 song with tape recordings, news reports, audience noise, Thatcher- baiting spoken word and eventually blistering guitars, bass, drums and vocals.  

Sheep Farming In The Falklands

At the centre of Crass was a mass of contradictions. Aggressive, militant music to promote pacifism. Independent minded people wearing a uniform (black army surplus). Rimbaud telling audiences to 'make your own fucking minds up'. Dada and Situationism and gigs with no stage lights. Basic three chord punk played by people who listened to Benjamin Britten, free jazz and avant garde composers. 

This documentary about Crass from 2006 is good if you've got an hour to spare. The title of the film is also the title of this post, taken from the final lines on their 1983 album Yes Sir, I Will- 'You must learn to live with your own conscience, your own morality, your own decision, your own self. You alone can do it. There is no authority but yourself'.

J'Adore Le Monde

My favourite French rock 'n' roll beat group The Liminanas have returned to the fray with Bertrand Belin on vocals and an achingly beautiful song called J'Adore Le Monde. Proclaiming love for the world isn't always easy- turn on the TV and sometimes the only natural response is turn the thing off again- but Bertrand, Lionel and Marie are very persuasive. The bass throbs, the Velvets style drumming thuds away, and Bertrand sounds like the singer in the hippest supper club down some side street in Paris you stumbled into one evening and then could never find again. An album, Faded, follows in February. 

Monday's Long Song

'They're selling postcards of the hanging/ They're painting the passports brown/ The beauty parlour is filled with sailors/ The circus is in town...'

So begins Desolation Row, the final song on Bob Dylan's 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited, an album that has a claim to be Dylan's greatest (it opens with Like A Rolling Stone and each song that fellows matches that song for songwriting). It was the second album Dylan released in '65. The second! He put out Bringing It All Back Home in March which was recorded in a few days in January. Highway 61 Revisited took a little longer to record- a few weeks from the middle of June before an end of August release. In a world where bands/ artists take years to write, record, release and then promote and tour an album the fact that Dylan put out these two within six months of each other is staggering. To prove he was on a roll, he recorded the songs for Blonde On Blonde in January 1966 and released that one, a double, in June. 

Desolation Row is eleven minutes long and eleven verses  and packs an entire world of characters and scenarios into it, a portrait of a world on the brink and breaking down. Dylan responded to an interviewer by saying Desolation Row was in Mexico, 'just across the border', but this was at a 1965 press conference and we shouldn't take anything he said at a 1965 press conference at face value. Al Kooper reckoned it was in Manhattan, a rundown stretch of Eighth Avenue. Kerouac's lonely mountain top fire watching hut that inspired Desolation Angles may have been in there too. The cast of characters in the song includes a blind commissioner, Cinderella, Romeo, Cain and Abel, the Good Samaritan, Ophelia, Noah, Einstein (disguised as Robin Hood), a jealous monk, Dr. Filth and his nurse, the Phantom of the Opera, the hunchback of Notre Dame, Casanova, Nero, Ezra Pound, TS Eliot, the agents and the superhuman crew, and the passengers on the Titanic. There are riot squads, people making love or expecting rain, electric violins, heart attack machines, insurance men, broken doorknobs, kerosene, people being killed with self confidence, people's faces being re- arranged and new names given to them... it's a vast song, panoramic and kaleidoscopic, Dylan's mid- 60s urban poetics that may mean everything and may mean nothing. 

Desolation Row

Charlie McCoy's guitar parts add so much to Dylan's acoustic strumming, a pretty addition that seems deliberately at odds with the roll call of horrors in the lyrics.

Cat Power, never one to shy away from an ambitious cover version, covered Desolation Row in 2022 and released it a year ago, December 2023, extending Dylan's eleven minutes into twelve. 

Desolation Row

Cat didn't just cover Desolation Row. She covered the entire 1966 Dylan concert (long thought to be the Royal Albert Hall but actually Manchester's Free Trade Hall, the famous gig where Dylan goes electric in the second half and an audience member shouted 'Judas' at Dylan). 

As a bonus, sort tying the two artists together, this is a fan made video of footage of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lucian Carr and others on the streets of New York in 1959, with Cat Power's Good Woman as the soundtrack, a song that packs an emotional punch in the vocal performance, the words and the guitar playing. 

Fifty Minutes Of Blind On A Galloping Remix

A year ago David Holmes released Blind On A Galloping Horse, an album that over four sides of vinyl and seventy minutes of music pulled together many of the political, emotional, cultural and psychological strands that seemed to come together in 2023. Protest in the face useless governments, , self- reliance, a roll call of the lost, the ongoing influence and spirit of Andrew Weatherall, the voices of refugees, humanity and community, the need to find the space and peace to clear one's head from all the noise and clutter that is out there. A beacon maybe, a call to arms perhaps, a face looking back at you from the crowd. I've played it again several times recently and it still hits all those spots. 

The songs from Blind On A Galloping Horse have been remixed, a slew of like minded souls refitting David's songs and Raven Violet's vocals into new sounds and shapes. There are over thirty of them, every single one worth hearing. It seemed to me that as we approach the end of 2024, a year on from the Galloping Horse, a Sunday mix of some of those remixes was in order. 

I featured each song only once, avoiding multiple versions- there were multiple remixes of several of the songs and all of the highest quality. There's some real high tempo bangers too which I held back from until part way through this mix when Timmy Stewart raises the bpms after a slow burning first twenty five minutes, and when I think of the remixes that didn't make this mix- Heidi and Lovefingers, Rich Lane, Decius, Sonic Boom, X- Press 2, Cosmodelica, Skymas, Daniel Avery- I think a volume 2 might be in order some day. 

There's more Holmes available at NTS this week, David's monthly God's Waiting Room show, two hours of the best music money can buy- this month includes his new remix of Five Green Moons, Spiritualized, V/Z and Poly High School Band's version of Midnight Cowboy. Listen here. 

Fifty Minutes Of Blind On A Galloping Remix

• Emotionally Clear (Ammonite Remix)
• Yeah x 3 (The Vendetta Suite's Reason To Drift Remix)
• Blind On A Galloping Horse (Sons Of Slough)
• Agitprop 13 (GLOK Remix)
• Hope Is The Last Thing To Die (Timmy Stewart's 11th Hour Remix)
• It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love (Hardway Bros Live At SSL Dub)
• Stop Apologising (Horse Meat Disco Vocal Remix)
• Necessary Genius (Phil Kieran Vocal Remix)

Emotionally Clear is one of Blind's slower, more blissed out songs but with several questions at its heart- do you believe in the absence of evidence? Do you believe in unjust punishment? Do you believe in cognitive dissonance? On her Ammonite Remix Amy Spencer breaks the song down into its barest bones, a spectral, whispery, ambient gauze with Raven Violet's vocals looped, FXed and chopped up. 

The Vendetta Suite is Belfast's Gary Irwin, a veteran Holmes associate and the in house engineer at Exploding Plastic Inevitable studio and label. This remix, one of a pair, keeps the drifting, ambient feel going. The Vendetta Suite's album from 2021, The Kempe Portal Stone, is well worth your time and attention if you haven't heard it. 'Got my mind on freedom/ And one foot out the door', Raven coos, and then the line taken from David's track from a GLS 10" from 2021, 'love is a mystery'.

Sons Of Slough (Ian Weatherall and Duncan Gray) bring the dub to the album's title track, a dissection of the world and its madness sent to the dub section via rim shots, a slowed down bassline, melodica, and also stir in a deeply Power, Corruption And Lies-era New Order feel. 

Andy Bell in his GLOK guise took Agitprop 13 and kept things weird and experimental, bass and synth with rumbling rhythms and layers of backing vocals- it builds insistently, more and more coming to the foreground. 

Hope Is The Last Thing to Die was the opening shot of the Blind On A Galloping Horse album, released as a single back in September 2021, a response to the incompetence and idiocy of governments in the face of modern crises, Covid and climate change. It lit up autumn 2021 for me and has done so repeatedly since. Timmy Stewart, another Belfast connection who DJs and produces as Black Bones, turns David's protest song and call to resistance into something tough and metallic. The rat tat tat of the snare breaks through, like a pipe being tapped with a monkey wrench.  

Sean Johnston's remixes of It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love are among his best Hardway Bros remixes, that cosmic/ ALFOS groove spinning out onto the floor with a lovely, brain twisting distorted synth riff and disco arpeggios.

Stop Apologising is the most direct song on the album, a genuine three minute glam pop anthem, Raven singing of self reliance, the importance of being grounded and 'the wonders of psychedelic therapy'. Horse Meat Disco turn everything up to eleven, add an enormous glam disco stomp, Goldfrapp amped up to the max, big piano chords, and keep it all going and going and going... 'Stop apologising for things you never done/ Stop catastrophising put your feet back on the ground'. 

Necessary Genius is David's tribute to the misfits, artists, dreamers, outsiders and radicals who make the culture, a roll call of the great and good- Serge and Jane, John Coltrane, Angela Davis, Samuel Beckett, Ennio Morricone- and particularly some of those who we have lost in recent years- Terry Hall, Andrew Weatherall, Sinead O'Connor. Phil Kieran is another Northern Irish DJ, musician, producer and remixer and his remix of Necessary Genius is a blinder, full on basement club, messy dance floor music and the perfect fit for those people listed in the lyrics. 

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.