Soundtrack Saturday

A bit of a soundtrack detour today into the world of late 60s and early 70s children's TV, not a topic that gets much coverage round here. In 1969 the BBC began broadcasting The Clangers,  stop- motion animation series about a group of knitted creatures that lived on the moon who spoke by whistling and who ate only green soup and blue string pudding. The Clangers one of my earliest childhood memories. 

The Clangers ran from 1969 to 1972 and was made by Oliver Postgate, who wrote, filmed, animated and narrated the series. He also scored the soundtrack by drawing it out graphically and then had it turned into music by his friend  Vernon Elliott (a composer and bassoonist). They recorded it together in a village hall in Kent. Late 60s BBC English eccentricity at its finest. The music is classical crossed with kid's TV, the minor chord variations echoing minimalist composers such as Erik Satie

In 2001 Jonny Trunk released a CD of music from The Clangers, compiled with Oliver Postgate and containing lots of very short pieces, some only fifteen or twenty seconds long along with the intro music (with narration), some longer pieces, a self explanatory four minutes titled Useful Musical Sequences, another called Running Around Music and finishing with A Clangers Opera, Act One, an eleven minute libretto Postgate compiled from The Iron Chicken and The Music Trees. Enjoy.

Episode One/ Intro Music and Dialogue

Useful Musical Sequences

A Clangers Opera, Act One

It's Curtains For You

When The Stone Roses- The Remixes came out in October 2000 I was very much not interested in it.It seemed to be yet another Silvertone cash in on an album and a band they'd been bleeding dry for over a decade, by a record company the band took to court to part company with. Remixes of the songs from the debut album also seemed to me to be an inherently un- Roses thing. Sacrilege. Heresy. Those songs don't need anything else doing to them. Why would someone even think of it? 

I'm not a person who dislikes remixes either as has been well established over the lifetime of this blog- I often prefer the remix to the original track (depending on the remixer obviously). The Stone Roses- The Remixes also came at a time when it felt very unlikely that there was any involvement from the band in this. Squire and Brown weren't talking. Reni was whereabouts unknown. Mani was heavily involved with Primal Scream. Ian's solo career was well under way and they all seemed happy to move on. 

I've shifted my attitude to this album twice, once a few years ago when I heard the Justin Robertson remix of Waterfall out in a bar and found myself enjoying it. Justin didn't do anything too radical to it, a skippy acid house drum beat, some atmospherics and a xylophone, and then the guitar riff comes in with Ian's vocal, those lyrics about a girl dropping acid and boarding a cross channel ferry, leaving 'the filth and the scum/ this American satellite's won'. There's a spaced out and stripped down state to Justin's remix that I like now.

Waterfall (Justin Robertson Remix)

A few weeks ago my friend Spencer sent me a link to the Soul Hooligan remix of Shoot You Down. Curiosity won and I clicked through. Lots of reverb, the strum of a guitar isolated, a loop of brushed drums, Ian's hushed vocals, the hum of an amp switched on behind everything. Ian's line, 'I'd love to do it and you know you've always had it coming', gets looped up, the guitars pile up a bit, cymbals splash- it's nicely done and, again, not a radical re- working but different enough to hear the song anew.

Shoot You Down (Soul Hooligan Remix)

Soul Hooligan are/were Austin Reynolds, a producer from Essex. I played their remix of Shoot You Down at The Golden Lion last weekend. 

After finding that I enjoyed that one I went back in and have dipped in and out of the some of the rest. This one, Kinobe's remix of Elizabeth My Dear stood out...

Elizabeth My Dear (Kinobe Remix)

Ian and John's anti- monarchical ditty opens side two of the debut album, the circling Strawberry Fayre guitar part re- purposed with Ian wishing death upon the monarch, all less than a minute long. A statement as much as a song. Kinobe turn it into a sweetly 60s psychedelic folk song, looping, delaying and FXing it out for nearly five minutes. 

Liminal

Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe have an album out in October- Liminal. It's the third of a three album series. I missed the first pair- Luminal and Lateral- so have some catching up to do. Eno's very prolific isn't he? One of the pieces of music from the forthcoming one, Ringing Ocean, came my way recently and it struck me as being very beautiful...

It's somewhere in the intersection between neo- classical, ambient and dream sequence music, very difficult to describe adequately but blissful, restrained, repetitive and hypnotic music that suggests rather than tells. Eno and Wolfe say it's liminal because it sits in the borderland between song and non- song. 

This one, The Last To Know, is from the same album and is evidently halfway between song and non- song, ambient drift and slow synths with a vocal that at first seemed quite out of place to me, the song and non- song colliding...

I suspect that over the course of an eleven track album it will all make perfect sense, the flow from one piece to another.

This seems the ideal time to re- post this track by Brian's brother Roger, a gorgeous but really quite melancholy ambient piece called Tidescape from October 2023 which I loved but never followed up (possibly because I thought an entire album might be a bit too melancholic). Roger plays piano and is joined by Alexander Glucksmann, Jon Goddard and Christian Badzura, between them contributing clarinet, electric guitar, organ, vibraphone and synths. Music in/ for a state of flux. 

Nothing's Changed I Still Love You

We were in a bar in Sale recently, early evening, fairly quiet, one of those new type of bars set up in a former shop unit. There were a few customers/ drinkers scattered round the edges of the bar, couples and a small group of friends. The bar staff (all ridiculously young) were busying themselves and selecting songs from an iPad. One of them cued up this song and as Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce crashed in, building to that micro- second pause before Morrissey starts singing it seemed to inject a jolt of electricity into everyone in the room. At several tables people were singing along or mouthing the words.

Stop Me If You Think That You've Heard This One Before

Johnny's guitar playing is immense, clanging and melodic, indie- glam played on a twelve string Gibson which gives it that huge sound and Morrissey, well, we don't like to talk about him any more do we but the lyrics are among his best, witty and clever, memorable and tailor made for singalongs. Famously it was lined up to be a summer 1987 single but the Hungerford massacre and the song's line about a 'shy, bald Buddhist' reflecting and planning a mass murder jinxed it- the BBC said they wouldn't play it and Rough Trade went for I Started Something I Couldn't Finish instead. Johnny also nails a guitar solo, something not many Smiths songs contain.  

Johnny is a big fan of the song, playing it live with his band- he did it when I saw him at The Ritz a few years ago. This clip is from The Tonight Show.

Thinkin' Bout U

Psychederek's new single, Thinkin' Bout U, came out last Friday, four versions of the track. The first- Thinkin' Bout U Pt. 1 (Mercury)- picks up where his cover of 808 State's Pacific State from last year's Alt! 12" left off, with sumptuous synth chords, birdsong, ambient house vibes and a killer saxophone line. 

Pt 1 (Mercury) eases us in gently. Pt 2 (Venus) adds drums, an insistent groove with a driving bassline, the sax a little lower in the mix, a Stone Roses- esque guitar line, shifting from ambient house to indie dance. Pt. 3 (Mars) is dance floor gold the drums and bass in A Certain Ratio territory, heads down and funked up. Pt. 4 (Jupiter/ Reprise) turns the sax line into an accordion, the vibe gone all Balearic. It's a wonderful EP that shows the possibilities in music, and that one version is never the only way to do something.Get it at Bandcamp. 

September Songs

Few months mark the start of something new as much as 1st September does, a real change in the seasons, change of mood, new phase of the year,  the whole back to school routine (which as someone who has worked in education since the early 90s is very much part of my annual rhythm). 

In 1984 Ian McCulloch tested the water for a solo career with a single released under his own name, outside the Bunnymen with a cover of Kurt Weill's September Song. Weill's song looks forward to autumn coming...

'But it's a long, long while from May to December
And the days grow short when you reach September
And the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
And I haven't got time for waiting game

And the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days I'd spend with you'

September Song (Long Version)

In 1987 David Sylvian released a solo album, Secrets Of The Beehive which had this song to open it, one minute and seventeen seconds of David and piano. For David, the inevitability of September and the changes it brings are shot through with melancholy...

'The sun shines high above, the sounds of laughter
The birds swoop down upon the crosses of old grey churches
We say that we're in love while secretly wishing for rain
Sipping Coke and playing games

September's here again'

September

Much more recently, in 2021, Chris Coco and George Solar released September On The Island, a tribute to Ibiza after all the tourists have gone home...

September On The Island (Dub Version)

Forty Five Minutes Of Teenage Fanclub

A few weeks ago I was suddenly struck by the urge to hear a load of Teenage Fanclub and I binged on them for a couple of days. They wrote some of the best guitar songs of the 90s and their sound the guitars and triple songwriters and lead vocalists- set them apart from most of their peers. I got on board with Bandwagonesque (but was already familiar with A Catholic Education via housemates) and then followed them through the 90s before drifting away from them some time in the 00s but from A Catholic Education, Bandwagonesque, Grand Prix and Songs From Northern Britain they rarely put a foot wrong. They really nailed that Glasgow indie via 60s and 70s America thing and a lot of their songs carry an emotional heft too. Big Star were often referenced by the music press in the early 90s but I think the Fannies have taken as much influence from Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Love and The Byrds as Big Star. Anyway, the Sunday mix series came calling for them and here it is, forty minutes of Teenage Fanclub songs, sequenced together, one running into another like a dream TFC gig but with no gaps between the songs.

Forty Five Minutes Of Teenage Fanclub

• Don't Look Back (Have Lost It Version)
• Star Sign
• Everything Flows
• It's A Bad World
• Ain't That Enough
• Alcoholiday
• I Don't Know
• Sparky's Dream
• Planets
• The Concept
• Don't Look Back

In 1995 Teenage Fanclub released a 7" single titled Teenage Fanclub Have Lost It with acoustic versions of four songs, one from each of their then four albums. As well as acoustic guitars there are organs, recorders, sampled sounds, melodica and banjo- much more than just the songs done on acoustic guitars. Gerald Love's Don't Look Back, a genuine TFC and 90s guitar band peak, opened the EP. The singing and playing are glorious and the lyrics beautifully romantic, 'I'd steal a car to drive you home/ But don't look back on an empty feeling'.

Star Sign is from Bandwagonesque, released in November 1991 (on the same day as Screamadelica and Loveless- Creation really cleaned up). Star Sign fades in with guitar amp feedback, Neil Young style, and then explodes, drummer Brendan O'Hare thumping away, Gerald (again) singing and shrugging, 'big deal... seen it all before'. Alcoholiday is from the same record, a gloriously fucked, end of a love affair song.  I Don't Know is Raymond McGinley's sole Bandwagonesque song. The Concept opened Bandwagonesque, a Norman Blake masterpiece about being in a band and a girl. The freak out coda is pure Neil Young. 

Everything Flows is from 1990's A Catholic Education, the band's sound ragged, looser and darker, borrowing more from US 80s indie punk (Sonic Youth, Pixies et al), proto- grunge than their later 60s sound. Norman sings and writes, admitting to a very turn of the 90s aimlessness.

It's A Bad World is from 1997's Songs From Northern Britain, pound for pound and song for song their best album. Every song could be a single. There was a time in the late 90s when we were waiting for Isaac to have a bone marrow transplant to treat the rare genetic condition he was born with, a wait to find a matching donor that seemed to go on for months. I would drive home listening to either Songs For Northern Britain or Primal Scream's XLRTR and certain songs really, really struck me, they were almost too much. Raymond McGinley's It's A Bad World was one of them- the triple harmonies, crunchy guitars, Neil Young lead line and love lorn lyrics hit me hard and it really did feel like it was a bad world. A beautifully sung bad world. Ain't That Enough is from the same album, its first single and a wide eyed look at the world and its wonders. Planets saw them look up and add strings to the mix- it seems very at odds with 1995's hedonism- 'we're going over the country/ Into the highlands/ To look for a home'. 

Sparky's Dream is from 1995's Grand Prix, released at the height of Britpop, a sugar coated pure pop rush. Don't Look Back was also in its original form on Grand Prix and takes us back where we started, those chugging Big Star guitar chords and harmonies and the driving into the sunset lyrics that marry euphoria and loss- don't look on an empty feeling.

Soundtrack Saturday

Betty Blue was a late 80s French student/ arthouse favourite, the story of Betty played by Beatrice Dalle and Zorg (Jean Hugues- Anglade). Beatrice Dalle was, let's face it, a major part of the film's attraction... 

In the film, directed by Jean- Jacques Beineix, Betty meets Zorg, a struggling writer, at his wooden beach house on the Mediterranean coast. The film depicts Betty as wild, passionate, and impulsive- the opening three minutes of the film is a long shot of the two having sex in uncomfortable close up. Not long after she burns the beach shack down following an argument with the landlord. Later on she smashes up the apartment they live in. They move to the outskirts of Paris and Betty spirals into poor mental health. I'm not sure that the depiction of Betty's health, her treatment or Zorg's response is particularly sympathetic and doesn't hold up that well to 21st century eyes but films are a product of their times and the people, that made them. It made a star out of Beatrice. 

In France the film was titled 37.2 Le Matin. The soundtrack is a work of joy, written and played by Gabriel Yared and released in 1988. These three pieces from it will add a certain ambient/ Gallic/ piano and woodwind flair to your matin...

Betty Et Zorg

C'est Le Vent, Betty

37.2 Ce Matin

Time After Time

Summer's always the best time at the cemetery where Isaac is buried. The sunflowers are in the shops, the sky is blue, the grass is dry enough to sit on, and the light grey of his headstone catches the sun. 

Sunflower

Sunflower is the opening song on Low's 2001 album Things We Lost In The Fire. Until summer 2022 I never associated it with Isaac and since then I always do. 

'I bought some sweet sweet sunflowers/ And gave them to the night'.

It's well over three years now since he died. Last November, containing both his birthday and a week later the anniversary of his death, was very rough- the build up to his birthday and then the week in between. The next day it's December and then there's the run up to Christmas to be endured. When we got into January this year it felt a bit like everything settled down and that some kind of 'three years on' accommodation with grief had been made. The rawness of the anniversaries and the first two to three years faded a little and although I still thought about him every day it became possible to do so with a smile. The feeling that tears or the sucker punch of grief were always close to the surface receded a little. 

I noticed in the early summer that it still had the power to come in and floor me occasionally- sometimes a sudden gasp, that instant (but recurring) realisation of 'Isaac's dead'. It can sometimes leave me feeling like the breath has been sucked out of me. But more common was the gloom descending for no reason for a day or two, a sadness covering everything that wasn't directly triggered by anything, it was... just there. Then it would go. It happened in early May and lasted nearly a week. It's happened since but only for a day or two and then it dissipates. So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut noted in Slaughterhouse Five.

Earlier this summer we came to a decision about Isaac's bedroom. It was largely untouched since he left it, when we took him to hospital on 27th November 2021. His calendar's were still on the wall, still displaying November 2021. His clothes and belongings still where he left them. I didn't like to go in there much at all. It had also though become a bit of a dumping ground for some of our stuff, some coats on his bed and so on. I went in there a few months ago and driving home from work a day or two after came to the conclusion we needed to do something about it. I wasn't ready to do anything about it until that exact point. Lou wasn't either. 

We decided to take his bed out, to go through his clothes and things and sort them out, keep the ones we really couldn't let go of but store them properly in some boxes, replace the bed with some furniture, and make it a room that was still his but not his bedroom. Going through his clothes was the most painful thing we've done since last November and made me remember how difficult this can still be- and also how far we've come. Some of the clothes, when we looked at them, we decided could go- some of them, straight away, we knew didn't spark anything but some of his clothes did so very much, they seem to contain his essence in some ways, to be a version of him. 

The room is now much better- brighter, some pictures of him framed and mounted, still his room but not the room he left that night, not a room preserved in time- I can go into it and feel ok. Progress. I'm not sure why this song is accompanying this post, it just seems to fit. The last song on side one of R.E.M.'s second album, Reckoning, released in 1984. Something about the ringing guitars and Michael Stipe's vocals just suggested itself. 

Time After Time (AnnElise)

Enjoy This Trip

A week ago we had our Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 launch party at Stranger Than Paradise in Hackney. It was by all accounts a very good evening and well attended. I couldn't make it due to work commitments- nor could Martin or Dan- but the album got played in full, Baz (below, right) and Mark (below, left) both DJed and Richard Fearless played a superb three hour set which got people moving. It was recorded and as soon as that surfaces I'll share it here. 

The first fifty copies came with a beautiful free art print, designed by sleeve artist Rusty. The first copy sold on the night was to S- Express main man Mark Moore who was passing through, heard the unreleased Sabres Of Paradise track on our album, the eleven minute dub- house splendour of Lick Wid Nit Wit, and bought a copy on the spot. Mark is a huge Sabres fan. Back in 1991 when Mark Moore's path crossed with Andrew Weatherall's, this barnstorming, outside the box remix was the result....

Find 'Em, Fool 'Em, Forget 'Em (The Eighth Hour Mix) 

Back in spring 1988 I was seventeen years old. I can clearly remember watching S- Express gatecrashing Top Of The Pops miming to their smash hit Theme, my head turned by its brashness and day glo brilliance, Mark and his friends cavorting round the studio, the cut and paste sampling a million miles from The Smiths, The Wedding Present and The Primitives...

The idea that thirty seven years later the front man of that group would be buying an album that I'd put together with four friends, that I wrote the sleeve notes for, would have caused my seventeen year old head to spin round and detach itself. 

Theme From S- Express is of course one of the greatest dance records ever made. 

Theme From S- Express

Here's Mark clutching his copy of our album at Stranger Than Paradise last Thursday with the great Chris Rotter...

This weekend we have a northern launch party for Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 at The Golden Lion in Todmorden. The Golden Lion is the epicentre of the whole thing- we first talked about making an album while DJing there and Golden Lion Sounds is the record label it came out on. Volume 2 went in the post last week and copies have been arriving at people's homes ever since as well as copies at various record shops. If you haven't got one you can buy one at GLS, ten tracks exclusive to the album- along side Sabres Of Paradise there are Red Snapper, Dicky Continental, A Certain Ratio and Number, Unit 14, Richard Fearless, David Harrow, Richard Norris, Bedford Falls Players and Sleaford Mods. Mark's twenty five minute sampler mix of the ten tracks is here. 

Our launch party takes place in the back room with me, Martin and Dan DJing from 2pm though until 8. Free entry, fun for all the family, no requests etc. If you're in the area, feel free to drop by and say hello. 

At the same time and into the early hours there's a Lion collaboration with The Gun, Hackney with a huge cast of DJs on in the main room including Decius Soundsystem, Vladimir Ivkovic, Lena Killikens, Nathan Gregory Wilkins, Psych Williams and Luke Insect. 

The Healing

Deeply Armed are a trio from Belfast who released a debut single earlier this year- The Healing. They have the support of Scottish author David Keenan who writes about them at their website where he and they promise 'Neu! tripping on a Northern Soul loop with Sonic Boom setting the controls for the heart of the sun'. The Healing is six minutes of magic that go a long way to meeting that description, shimmering analogue synths, a very mid- 70s West German motorik groove, some noise and distortion and eventually a guitar riff that pulls at the heartstrings. As the guitar gets you, the voices come in, singer Michael and sisters Sinead and Mairead all singing round one mic. The drummer messes with the groove, shifting to a military rat- a- tat- tat before dropping back in and the voices and synths combine, conjuring that late night, low lit, basement flat feel.

There are remixes, one from Andrew Innes and Brendan Lynch, one from Lone Swordsman Keith Tenniswood and most recently Richard Fearless of Death In Vegas. On the Born To Go Mix Innes and Lynch pump it up, turbo- charging the groove and the bass and pulling the backing vox to the fore, the motorik going to the go- go and coming in at under three minutes for those lovers of short 7" single length songs.

Keith Tenniswood strips The Healing down, a blip and a bloop over a low fi drum machine and padding bass, some synth wobble and glockenspiel. Hazy and spaced out, there's a warm glow about Keith's  eight minutes mix. It cold go on for longer and it'd be no problem at all. All three versions can be bought at Bandcamp, digital and 12" vinyl. 

The Richard Fearless isn't out until 5th September but is a ten minute machine music remake, very much in the vein of Fearless' recent releases, his Death Mask album from earlier this year and his Haywired track on Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2. 

 

Last Of The Legendary Bigfoot Hunters

Luke Haines and Peter Buck played Gorilla on Saturday night, part of a tour to promote the third album in their 'psychiatry trilogy', Going  Down To The River... To Blow My Mind. Peter Buck is (obviously) formerly a member of R.E.M., a band who rose to the biggest stages in the world via a series of much loved Southern USA indie rock albums, writing songs that defined a part of the 80s and 90s for many of us. Buck seems to be happiest when playing his guitar- the size of the stage and crowd don't really matter, just show him to the stage door and pass him his Rickenbacker. Gorilla is a small Manchester venue and it wasn't full on Saturday night- and yes, it is pretty incredible to be standing just a few feet away from Peter Buck playing guitar. 

Haines has a history in The Autuers, The Servants and Black Box Recorder as well as being the author of an account of the 90s, Bad Vibes- Britpop And My Part In Its Downfall, that is an essential counterpoint to some of the more nostalgic versions of mid- 90s guitar pop. Haines is an outsider, the outsider's outsider maybe, a critic, a theorist, a fan of pop culture but also someone happy to slay sacred cows and launch tirades against conformity. His songs are niche and not a million miles away from the cultural landscape of Half Man Half Biscuit but with fewer jokes- they open tonight with The Pink Floyd Research Group and canter through songs from the three albums Luke and Peter have made together, songs about nervous breakdowns (56 Nervous Breakdowns), nuclear war (Nuclear War), revolutions from the last few hundred years of history (45 Revolutions) and the British army on  hallucinogenic drugs (The British Army On LSD), Haines in Panama hat and and glasses with yellow lenses poking sticks in British society and culture, pointing fingers at the establishment, and raising a few laughs as well. To his right Scott McCaughey (an auxiliary member of R.E.M. from 1994 to the end, and in a slew of bands including The Minus 5) plays bass, there's a synth/ percussion player and Patty Hearst lookalike Linda Pitmon plays drums, hard and fast. 

Last Of the Legendary Bigfoot Hunters

Buck picks and strums, rarely playing much that sounds that much like his classic R.E.M. sound- Haines and Buck are mining a seam of post- punk, Lou Reed in the 70s, some late 60s psyche and leftfield guitar rock. Between songs Haines entertains and appears to be having a good time, tuning up and then ploughing back into the songs. They finish with The Commies Are Coming and then this one...

Rock 'n' Roll Ambulance

... and return for an encore, the psychedelic space rock of Exit Space (The Kids Are Super Bummed Out). It's a good gig, everyone's happy, and it finishes promptly at 10.30 as Gorilla is turning into a club at 11.00, a Manchester Pride after party. My brother and I go to the front bar and have a drink and about 15 minutes later the former guitarist of R.E.M. comes through the bar, on his out onto Whitworth Street and while I wouldn't say he was massively overjoyed at being asked for a photo he did indulge us... 

Me and Peter Buck!

Monday's Short Song

Thought I'd twist the traditional Monday long song slot for today's August bank holiday with something under two minutes long but one that also contains the word Monday in its title- Ultramarine's A Year From Monday (from the re-issue earlier this year of 1998's A User's Guide), a collection of thirteen tracks recorded by the Essex duo in 1996/7. Nothing from the album sounds like it was recorded the best part of three decades ago. As for the song title, a year from Monday? Anything could happen by then... 

A Year From Monday

Forty Minutes Of Folkishness

Today's Sunday mix is an inspired by or 'ish' mix, forty minutes of music that is folk adjacent or inspired- the melodies, the playing, a cover of a late 60s, English folk rock classic, an edit of a 60s folk song, some other songs that just feel like they're in the folk music vernacular. Most of the songs on the mix are from this year, the rest from fairly recently.  For want of a better phrase, they've all got a folk vibe. 

There's plenty more music sitting in my downloads and music folders that fall within the boundaries of this- Richard Norris and Dot Allison both come to mind so a part two may follow.

Forty Minutes Of Folkishness

• Luke Schneider: midafternoon classic
• Matt Deighton: Tannis Root
• Coyote: The Outsider
• Andy Bell: Pinball Wanderer
• Andy Bell: Light Flight
• Sydney Minski Sargeant: Long Roads
• Totem Edits 12: Feel
• Sewell And The Gong: Passing Oort Clouds
• Four Tet: Into Dust (Still Falling)

Luke Schneider is from Nashville, a pedal steel guitarist and part of the ambient Americana scene. midafternoon classic came out last year, a couple of minutes of ambient/ folk with nylon strings, pedal steel and harmonica. His latest four track release came out two days ago and can be found here. 

Matt Deighton's Villager is a 1995 folk gem, much overlooked at the time. Tannis Root is a few minutes of acoustic guitar and some woodwind, lovely modern instrumental folk inspired music that came out on Moonboot's Moments In Time compilation. 

Coyote's The Outsider was the closing song on their 2021 album The Mystery Light, an acoustic guitar sequence and the vice of mystic/ writer/ speaker/ philosopher Alan Watts. The Coyote duo were nodding their heads at Andrew Weatherall too, who wrote under the pseudonym The Outsider in the Boy's Own fanzine and who was exactly what Watts is talking about, 'you don't have to join, you don't have to play the game...'

Andy Bell's Pinball Wanderer came out at the start of this year. The title track is lit up by a late 60s folk rock guitar melody, some shuffly acoustic guitars and a sense that Fairport Convention and The Stone Roses in 1989 got in a room together. On his 2022 covers EP Untitled Film Stills, Andy covered songs by Yoko Ono, The Kinks, Arthur Russell and Pentangle. Light Flight was from Pentangle's 1969 folk- rock album Basket Of Light, an album that pushed them into the charts. Light Flight was also the theme tune to BBC 1's Take Three Girls, a late 60s/ early 70s drama about three young women sharing a flat in London. 

I wrote about Sydney Minski Sargeant's forthcoming solo album Lunga last week. The single Long Roads is folk indebted, echoes of Nick Drake and Syd Barrett in the playing and singing. Lunga promises to be one of autumn's highlights. 

Totem Edit is Leo Elstob and Justin Deighton. On Feel they take Gordon Lightfoot's 1967 song The Way I Feel and turn it into a 2025 folk/ Balearic groove. I've played this out and it always gets a response. 

Sewell And The Gong's recent album Patron Saint Of Elsewhere is one of late summer 2025's best, a lovely fusion of folk, drones, pastoral melodies, motorik drums and samples. Previously, in 2023, Sewell released a four track EP called Tonight We Fly and Passing Oort Clouds is a beautiful, folk inspired instrumental, looped melodies, acoustic guitars and a gently prodding rhythm. Oort clouds are (possibly) a giant spherical shell surrounding the sun, the stars and the Kuiper Belt, a bubble made of icy comet like objects. 

Four Tet's Into Dust (Still Falling) came out earlier this summer and has been getting regular plays round here ever since, the Mazzy Star sample and vocal sinking into Four Tet's folky melodies and skippy drum track, Hope Sandoval's melancholy playing off against Keiran Hebden's propulsion.

Soundtrack Saturday

It would have been Joe Strummer's 73rd birthday two days ago, 20th August, had he lived. As a Strummer birthday soundtrack here's some songs from Mystery Train, the 1989 film that Joe starred in. Mystery Train was directed by the great Jim Jarmusch and is a triptych of stories that come together at the end, all centred around a hotel in Memphis where Screamin' Jay Hawkins is the night clerk. The first story features a Japanese couple on a pilgrimage to the birthplace of rock 'n' roll, played by Youki Kudoh and Masatoshi Nagase. The second is about an Italian widow stuck in Memphis overnight (played by Nicoletta Brashci) and the third is about a recently unemployed and single Englishman (Joe obvs) and his two friends played by Steve Buscemi and Rick Aviles. It's a charming and beautifully shot film, downtown America, funny and with well drawn characters. I have a friend who holds the opinion that Strummer's acting ruins Mystery Train but I'm giving Joe the benefit of the doubt.

The songs on the soundtrack are mostly 50s rock 'n' roll- Elvis' song, the film's title track, is central, one of the foundation stones of rock 'n' roll. Blue Moon is played many times too, in the hotel's foyer through the night. The chug of the guitars and the drums evoke that long black train rattling through the night. 

Mystery Train

Mystery Train was written and recorded by Junior Parker in 1953, a slower, more bluesy take. 

Mystery Train

Roy Orbison turns up to with Domino (later covered by The Cramps).

Domino

On the soundtrack album the second half is from the score, written and played by John Lurie, who worked with Jarmusch on Down By Law and Stranger Than Paradise and also Paris, Texas. The eight instrumentals on the soundtrack are all 50s/ 60s inspired rockabilly guitar- led instrumentals and all are good to work away from the film as well as on its soundtrack.

Mystery Train (Suite)

Tuesday Night In Memphis

Happy birthday Joe. 

Smoke Tests And Distant Planes

Leicester dark ambient duo Smoke Test have been clearing their musical shelves and emptying the cupboards, releasing an album, their third, titled Volume III. The musicians, Harvey and Ben, blend synths, guitars, found sounds and field recordings, creating drones and ambience that veers from interstellar to calming, from spaced out to uneasy. Ambient music often straddles the line between disturbing paranoia and reflective beauty. Smoke Test have a foot on either side of that divide. 

Highlights include the opening track Weird Flex- an Eno- esque descent from the outer limits into the atmosphere. Eris is judders and twinkles before distorting. Wasted Time seems to emerge from underwater, echoes and sonar bubbling up from the deep. 31 Atlas is radio static from a dying star. There's lots more on Volume III, out now. Find it at Bandcamp.

Also in the ambient/ drone zone is a new EP on Mighty Force from Alfie Kaye, four tracks under the title Distant Planes. Drone 2 comes first, rising and falling noise which grows and fades like stars flickering in the night sky. It is followed by Drone 3, a calmer and gentler piece, the endless circular ringing sound of a finger on a bowl or glass with a melody on top and time moves slowly indeed. Time Granular follows, radio waves or radar bleeps picking up messages from far off skies. Last is Vocoder, melodic drones and a wonderful sense of drift. Distant Planes is out at Mighty Force's Bandcamp today. Buy it here. 

The Birds

This ivy covered wall is in our garden, next door's garage forming the boundary to our small back garden. Sitting out in the evening two weeks ago it became apparent that a pair of blackbirds had nested in the trellis and behind the ivy. If you were in a chair too close to the ivy they'd stay away but if you sat further away they'd fly onto the hedge then scoot across to the ivy or roof of the garage and then quickly, when they thought you weren't watching, they'd disappear inside the ivy. A week later they started to appear, the male and the female, in quick rotations, with worms and berries in their beaks and then as soon as they disappeared inside the ivy there would be sound of several small hatchlings chirruping. Seconds later, the adult blackbird would fly out, off for more food and the other one would fly in, more food for the babies. 

I became quite invested in this, the life cycle of a pair of blackbirds happening in our garden and often taking place within a few feet of where I was sitting. I did some reading on blackbirds and their nesting habits: they build their nests typically close to the ground and often inside ivy; male blackbirds are black, female are brown; they mate for life; they often have between 3 and 5 babies which can leave the nest after two weeks, sometimes as early as 9 days. 

There are squirrels in the trees at the back of the garden, sometimes magpies in the area and several cats in the houses around us (although since our next door neighbours moved out, no cat lives next door). Squirrels will eat baby birds and hatchlings. Magpies will do their thing. Cats eat birds for fun. Everything seemed fine until one evening when I was in the kitchen and glanced out of the window I could see and hear the male and female blackbirds in a state of alarm and a cat prowling across our small patch of grass. The cat cleared off over the fence when I went out of the backdoor but things didn't look good. The blackbird couple disappeared for hours and I couldn't hear anything from the nest (I didn't look inside it or want to disturb it). On Tuesday evening I found a small, chubby baby blackbird on the grass, unable to move. The mother re- appeared a few times and tried to feed it but then gave up.  The one on the grass didn't live for long- it couldn't move and was running out of steam. At the back of the garden was the headless body of another of the babies. If there were 2 or 3 other babies from the nest it looked like they'd got away. I hope so anyway. The adults have gone from the garden. Maybe that's the survival rate for blackbirds- a couple from a nest surviving, a couple not making it, and the parents going off and repeating their cycle somewhere else. 

Nature- brutal isn't it? 

In the early 80s LA musician Rick Cuevas self released an album called Symbolism. Copies are very expensive now. The Birds, a song from it, has survived way beyond that private press album, a Yamaha drum machine, a Yamaha synth, an echo unit and some hypnotic, Durutti Column- esque guitar. Beautiful. A song I owe to Andrew Weatherall's much missed Music's Not For Everyone radio shows. 

The Birds

To The Birds was the b-side to Suede's 1992 debut single The Drowners, Bernard Butler's guitars kicking up a shoegaze wall of sound while Brett pleads with an unnamed someone to stick around.

To The Birds

Finally, Aldous Harding, New Zealand folk on 4AD, and a raw, quietly powerful song from 2017 that speaks for itself.

What If The Birds Aren't Singing, They're Screaming

Resist

Back in February Pye Corner Audio released an expensive box set compiling his Where Things Are Hollow series along with some new tracks and remixes. It's a comprehensive album and a deep dive into PCA world, where analogue synths and drum machines conjure up murky ambient, blurred electronic soundscapes, 70s sci fi/ TV and subterranean drones. The new Where Things Are Hollow included a remix John Talabot did back in 2020 which shifts Pye Corner Audio into slightly different territory, a powering, thumping breakbeat providing eight minutes of direct propulsion.

Resist (Jon Talabot Remix)

Pye Corner Audio regularly releases new music onto his Bandcamp page. At the start of August a two track EP came out, Matrix, which veered into shadowy cosmische house. Get it here. And closer to home Pye Corner Audio is playing live at Yard in Manchester, a venue in Cheetham Hill in the shadow of HMP Strangeways, at the end of September. There are still some tickets available- and I'll be able to enthuse to Martyn Jenkins directly about his music as some of The Flightpath Estate DJ team are playing support to both Pye Corner Audio and Shunt Voltage. 

Echoes

I promised a post about Pompeii and here it is. Pompeii really is a most extraordinary place, a city of 20, 000 people that stopped in time in the year 79AD. Two weeks ago we spent several hours there- surprisingly for a Saturday in August it was fairly quiet too and there were times when we could turn a corner and be the only people in a Pompeii side street. Standing in the streets, on the pavements, in the houses, shops, baths and bakeries, is to feel some kind of connection with those people who lived there 2000 years ago. The extraordinary thing about Pompeii, apart from its size, is its ordinariness, its similarity to modern cities and to see that their lives were very similar to ours. 

There are pavements raised above the paved roads. There are grooves from the wheels of wagons that were making deliveries to shops and food outlets. There are stepping stones to cross the road safely. There are the large houses of the wealthy and the smaller houses and flats of the poor. There are streets of shops and the bakeries (25 of them) that provided the Pompeiians with their staple daily food. There are fast food units (thermopolia), their counters facing the street with sunken jars embedded into the counter to serve snacks from. The city of Pompeii feels very like a town or city that we might live in.

There are also the showpiece attractions- the theatre (the teatro grande) with its perfect acoustics, stage, backstage area and seats for 5000 people.

 

Next door to the teatro grande is the smaller odeon teatro next door, a venue for 1000 people, the equivalent of your small indie venue and the bigger medium size band venue round the corner. 

Those Pompeiians who could afford it decorated their walls with art, hand painted frescos supplied by local artists in whatever style and depicting whatever subject matter was fashionable and popular at the time. The survival of these, their colours and scenes is incredible (the frescos up the coast at Herculaneum are even more impressive). 

There are paintings that demonstrate the fun that could be had at the Lupanar brothel, for those with the  money and inclination. The women that worked there earned three times the average wage of unskilled urban labourer. 

And then there's this chap, in the House Of The Vetti, the home of two men who were freed slaves and made a fortune selling wine. The well endowed gentleman is Priapus (obvs), the God of fertility and abundance. As well as his enormous member there is a set of scales piled with money, representing the wealth the two men accumulated. 

The men who owned the house and commissioned the painting of Priapus were Aulus Vettius Restitus and Aulus Vettius Conviva. They likely had the same master and when freed went into business together.

At the centre of Pompeii is the forum, the public square (a rectangle actually) with the council offices at one end in the basilica and temples and shops round the other sides. Vesuvius looms in the background, the cause of the town's destruction and its survival. 

We wandered for hours, visiting the baths and the villas, walking up and down streets, poking our heads into people's homes and businesses, marveling at the size and scale of the place and how well preserved it is. The only place where access was limited was the amphitheatre- the floor was covered in chairs for a series of concerts being held there, titled Beats Of Pompeii, and with a line up including Jean Michel Jarre, Nick Cave with Colin Greenwood, Andrea Bocelli and Norwegian folk band Wardruna. It was disappointing not to be able to stand in the centre of the arena but in some ways it was good that the venue is being used, a stunning backdrop for any artist.

I've always been a bit averse to 70s Pink Floyd but their 1972 film Live In Pompeii has recently been re- released and it ties in nicely to this post. The band played songs over four days with no audience other than the film crew, director Adrian Maben and some local children who sneaked in. They had to pay local dignitaries off to get the use of the ampitheatre and had issues with the electricity supply. Floyd's gear took four days to arrive by truck and Maben spliced stock footage into the film alongside his own shots of Pompeii and the band. This is Echoes...

Found A Job

I start my new job today. After 24 years at my previous school I'm moving to a 6th form college in Salford to teach A Level history and politics. It's been a long time coming and there were times when I thought it would never happen, that I was too long in the tooth and too expensive compared to younger and cheaper colleagues. At the end of May though the stars aligned and I was offered this new job. It's a bit daunting, starting somewhere new after so long, meeting new colleagues in a new place but I'm looking forward to it. Change is good. It's also much closer to home and every minute I'm not now spending in traffic on the M60 is a minute gained. 

Back in 1978 Talking Heads agreed, Bob and Judy enlisting all their family and friends to make it work. 'If your work isn't what you love', David Byrne sings, 'then something isn't right'. Idealistic maybe- many people have to do jobs they don't love. But we should all in an ideal world enjoy what we do.

Found A Job

Six Hours Of Andrew Weatherall and DJ Harvey In Amsterdam

In 2012 Andrew Weatherall and DJ Harvey played a back to back set at Trouw in Amsterdam, the only B2B set Harvey has ever played apparently. It was recorded but for reasons unknown the set has remained locked away in the vaults of Resident Advisor ever since- until a couple of days ago when RA launched it onto the internet, causing some excitement and fuss. It's already been streamed over 33, 000 times. It's at Resident Advisor's Soundcloud page which you can find here. 

It starts out slowly, Andrew and Harvey playing some slow mo, cosmic warm up tunes, bringing things up gently. There are times when its fairly easy to spot who might be on the decks- Andrew with that chuggy, ALFOS, cosmic sound, all synth arpeggios and tracks that build insistently over time, keeping the bpms in the 122- 127 range. The disco- dub edit of Echo And The Bunnymen that featured at ALFOS nights makes an appearance. Harvey drops the spangly disco, the funk and the soul. There are times when it could be either of them making the selection. It's six and a half hours of fun, ideal for an August weekend with the sun out. 

In 2011 Harvey released an album Locussolus, pulling together three 12" singles and some remixes into one long player, Harvey's discoball, party house sound spread out over eleven tracks. Andrew remixed Gunship, a disco/ dub affair very much capturing the stellar Weatherall sound at the time- chugging rhythms, spaced out synths, low slung bass and whooshes and whirls. 

Gunship (Andrew Weatherall Dub)

Soundtrack Saturday

Reggae's cultural breakthrough in the UK in the 1970s had many points that seem like watersheds including but not only: Bob Marley's rise to global fame and string of hit singles; Chris Blackwell and Island Records' focus on the Jamaican sound systems and artists; the Notting Hill Carnival's growth and popularity; various punk bands covering and promoting reggae and dub songs (not least The Clash's punk- reggae covers and John Lydon's enthusiasm); various budget price reggae compilations such as the Reggae Chartbusters and Tighten Up series of albums; and a pair of films and their soundtracks, 1972's The Harder They Come starring Jimmy Cliff and featuring a host of classic reggae songs and 1978's Rockers. 

The Rockers OST is a brilliant primer, a collection of hits and deep cuts from Jamaica, stars and lesser known acts, a sampler of roots reggae at its best. The film shows 70s reggae and its culture at its best, following Horsemouth, a drummer, and his money making plan to sell reggae records to the soundsystems, buzzing around the island on his orange motorbike. It started as a documentary and stars many reggae artists as themselves- Leroy Horsemouth Wallace is filmed at their homes with is actual family. Robbie Shakespeare, Big Youth, Dillinger, Gregory Isaacs and Burning Spear all appear. Eventually things go wrong for Horsemouth and his bike is stolen and he runs into problems with organised crime.

The soundtrack is fourteen songs from the film (with another sixteen heard in the film and not on the soundtrack album). This is sample of five of them opening with Inner Circle and the line, 'Dreadlocks, dreadlocks/ Flying through the air',a  tribute to roots rockers reggae...

We 'A' Rockers

Junior Murvin's Police And Thieves is a genuine classic, his voice quivering and floating over Lee Perry's production..

Police And Thieves

The Heptones' Book Of Rules is a sensational piece of vocal reggae, originally a single in 1973, the three way vocals a joy and the song apparently based on an American poem A Bag Of Tools by Robert Lee Sharpe.

Book Of Rules

Bunny Wailer's Rockers provides the film with a title and a very slinky piece of reggae, harmonica on top of the rhythms and Bunny singing of skanking with the rockers in the morning.

Rockers

Burning Spear were led by the golden voice of Winston Rodney, represented here in almost a capella style over an ambient/ found sound backdrop, Winston singing of Marcus Garvey, Addis Ababa and Jah. Weirdly, this is the first time that I've ever posted any Burning Spear here. 

Jah No Dead

Summer Songs

Summer Song came out three days ago, a third single from Sydney Minski Sargeant's forthcoming solo album Lunga (out in September). Summer Song is a real treat, a slowly trippy, woozy, light headed song that sounds like it was written lying down in long grass in August staring at the brilliant blue sky. There are echoes of Syd Barrett and 80s 4AD band Ultra Vivid Scene (both good things), a late 60s/ late 80s interface, but also very much Syd's own work. 

Four weeks before Summer Song Sydney released Long Roads, finger picked guitar calling Nick Drake to mind, another song infused with heat of summer longing and end times melancholy. Syd is only 23 years old. 

Both songs are a far cry from his other bands and work. Syd's main band is Working Men's Club who spent part of the summer supporting LCD Soundsystem in Brixton after a full tilt, packed out warm up gig at The Golden Lion. Syd's also a third of Demise Of Love (with Daniel Avery and Ghost Culture) who put out a four song EP in May, industrial techno and 80s alt- pop spliced together.

WMC have a very different vibe, Syd's alienated vocals running with industrial synths, New Order in the 80s sounds and thudding machine drums. Teeth was a 2019 single- the Anthony Naples remix adds some dancefloor euphoria. Ploys was from their second album Fear fear, out in 2022 and very much a response to Covid and lockdown. Erol Alkan pumps it up, synth squiggles and jack hammer kick drum, and Syd singing 'being sad makes me happy... when we talk of the times/ We talk in the past tense'

Teeth (Anthony Naples Remix)

Ploys (Erol Alkan Remix)

Return To The Flightpath Estate

Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2- more news! Our second album, complied by myself and my friends at The Flightpath Estate comes out on double vinyl at the end of the month. Pre- orders at Golden Lion Sounds have already seen over 700 copies sold and there are 500 set aside for sale over the counter at several UK record shops from late August including Piccadilly Records in Manchester and Stranger Than Paradise in Hackney. There are copies for sale at those shop's websites as well as at Bleep and Golden Lion Sounds. 

The Flightpath Estate began as a Facebook group back in 2013, me and Martin opening it up as a place to share Andrew Weatherall news and music. It became a group of several thousand people and the front page for an online resource of Andrew's mixes and shows, thousands of hours of them archived and available to listen to. That this fan group has grown to become a pair of actual records, both featuring entirely previously unreleased Weatherall tracks and otherwise new and exclusive music from such an array of talented people is proper 'pinch me' stuff. 

There are two launch parties imminent- the first is at Stranger Than Paradise a week today, Thursday 21st August, with some of The Flightpath Estate (most likely Mark/ Rude Audio and Baz) plus from 9pm until 11, Richard Fearless of Death In Vegas at the decks. It's free to attend and the album will be available to buy on the night. The first 50 copies will get a limited art print with their album, designed by Rusty and based on his sensational sleeve art for the record. For what it's worth, I'm very unlikely to be able to get down to London for this and already have serious FOMO about missing our album launch and Richard Fearless DJing. Please pop down if you're in the Hackney area, say hello to Baz and Mark, enjoy the night, buy an album. 

Just over a week later there's a northern launch at The Golden Lion in Todmorden, home of the best pub in the world and the record label that is putting Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 out. I will be at this one along with Martin, Dan and Baz, playing tracks from the album and whatever else we fancy in the backroom from 2pm until 8. Also taking place the same night is a collaboration between the Lion and The Gun, the now closed but legendary Hackney pub, with the Decius Soundsystem at the top of the bill. If you're in the Tod/ north west, come down and say hello. 

The album will be out by then- the official release date is 28th August but people that have pre- ordered may see their copies arriving a few days earlier that week. I got home from holiday recently to find my promo copy waiting for me and the sheer rush of excitement I got from looking at the sleeve, opening the gatefold and sliding the discs out was off the scale. Here I am with a ridiculously large looking left hand displaying Rusty's sleeve art...

And here we have my copies of Volumes 1 and 2 next to each other... and it's all well beyond what any of us thought this thing could be when we first started talking about the possibility of contacting a few of Andrew Weatherall's friends and seeing if they wanted to contribute a track to an album we were thinking of putting together. 

The ten tracks on Volume 2 are all superb- it more than stands up beside Volume 1. It kicks off with an unreleased Sabres Of Paradise track, Lick Wid Nit Wit, sitting in the vaults at Warp for thirty years, Andrew, Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns at the desk sliding faders, adding FX, playing instruments and writing music. Deep Jah Wobble inspired bass, the horns that would become Wilmot, rattling Sabres percussion, eleven minutes of mid- 90s Sabres groove ending with a cello. It's magnificent. Dicky Continental follows, Rich Thair's solo outfit marrying low fi, dusty jazzy funk with a snatch of Andrew's voice from Kiss FM radio, old and new spliced happily.

Side two goes hard with Unit 14 (an anonymous duo, our lips are sealed) hitting the techno sounds and spaces, a thumper that Andrew would surely have loved and then ten minutes of dub/ techno majesty from Richard Fearless, the sound of his recent album Death Mask diverted to the Flightpath Estate. 

On disc two LA resident and long time Weatherall cohort David Harrow blows the speakers with AanDee (fans of his and Andrew's Deanne Day alias will probably work out where that track title came from), a monster of a track, David switching his acid/ dub techno machines on and getting down to the core of things, a twisting, sinewy track with bleeps and bloops. Red Snapper's Qraqeb follows, frenetic and percussive, Rich's North African percussion hammering away while the synths and bass slide up and down, a track that jumps out of the speakers and keeps jumping. Side 3 finishes with A Certain Ratio. I've been listening to ACR and buying their records since 1987. They're one of the cornerstones of my musical DNA. Now they're on our record, with a track from their album last year (It All Comes Down To This) reworked Number, Rich Thair and Ali Friend's post-punk/ disco band. Estate Kings is sublime Manc noir, low slung and urban, the sound of driving round south Manchester late at night. 

Side 4 starts with Bedford Falls Players, the chuggy cosmic disco of In The Trees (It's Coming), synth stabs and space, voices from films and rumbling bass. Raising the tempo, Richard Norris' Brave Raver squelches in, drums and arpeggios, Norris happily in the space rave/ house/ Grid groove, the vocal from the breakdown all wide- eyed and open minded. Finally, it ends with Sleaford Mods and their cover of Two Lone Swordsmen's Sick When We Kiss, the UK grim duo breaking TLS down into urgent, post- punk and spluttering beats. 

Mark did a taster mix of the ten tracks, a twenty five minute sampler, which you can find here. Tangetially, Sabres Of Paradise re- issued their pair of 90s albums earlier this months, Sabresonic and Haunted Dancehall. Back in November 2023 The Flightpath Estate did a Sabresonic 30th anniversary night at The Golden Lion, a Q&A with Jagz and Gary, an airing of the recording of the Sabres Of Paradise live band playing at Herbal Tea Party in 1993 and a Jagz Kooner DJ set. Jagz and Gary held a similar event at Stranger Than Paradise last week. Friends of Sabres Sherman and Alex Knight both DJed and then Jagz played. That evening's sets were recorded and can be listened to here , nearly five hours of electronic music, an hour of red hot dub, acid house, some techno and more besides.