At the tail end of last year JC over at The Vinyl Villain posted a 1981 Lou Reed solo album, Walk On The Wild Side: The Best Of Lou Reed. I dug my vinyl copy out having not played it for years- I often go back to the Velvet Underground but rarely Lou's solo career.It's neither original nor revelatory to suggest that Lou's solo career is patchy, with a few gems, some albums that have some moments and some real clunkers. Trainspotting's Sick Boy held forth with what is a fairly commonly held view-
Mark (Renton/ Rent Boy): 'Lou Reed? Some of his solo stuff's nae bad'
Sick Boy: 'No, it's nae bad but it's nae good either. And in your heart you know that although it sounds alright, it's actually just shite'.
Trainspotting of course made a hit out of Lou's song Perfect Day, a song which is very much neither nae bad or nae good but fucking brilliant. Despite the Trainspotting view orthodoxy there are always Lou Reed fans who will make claims for albums that some of us had written off or passed over. Eventually you'll meet someone who'll claim that Mistrial is a lost gem. 1982's The Blue Mask is regularly acclaimed as a return to form (I think this view may hold water). The Vinyl Villain returned to Lou Reed's solo career earlier this week with a ten track compilation of Lou's solo stuff written by Walter, going up to and including 1989's New York- a genuine Lou Reed back to his solo best album.
Listening to Walk On the Wild Side: The Best Of Lou Reed after a considerable gap was a bit of a revelation to me. Some of the songs I hadn't heard for a very long time. Some of them transported me back to when I first heard them, in the late 80s. Some of them are songs that I have been playing frequently since JC's post last year, Lou's back catalogue re- entering my daily listening habits.
This one is from his solo debut, a self titled album from 1972. It was recorded in Willesden, London with a band of session musicians including Rick Wakeman. The twin guitars tone, basic drums and Lou's flat, spoken New York vocals are post- Velvets highlights. The album flopped but Wild Child is fantastic, a blur of words and imagery and white knuckle guitar playing.
Lou's 1970s saw him frequently re- visit songs he had from Velvets days, songs that he recycled and re- recorded. There were eight on the solo debut including Wild Child (which was never recorded by the band but was played live in 1970). His 1970s albums were all available cheaply in the 1980s and it was a lottery. The sleeves were often dreadful. There was precious little advice anywhere, no internet sites or magazine articles. But many of them have moments of Lou Reed brilliance. Transformer is obviously one, an album packed with great songs and elevated by Bowie and Mick Ronson, by their production, playing, arranging and sheer presence. But that album's follow up Berlin has a lot going for it too (although I recommend skipping The Kids). How Do You Think It Feels is one of his best, up there with any top ten Lou solo songs- piano, 70s sleaze and cabaret decadence and a guitar part that is vicious, a song for people who are 'speeding and lonely'.
I used to have cassette copies of both Sally Can't Dance (1974) and Coney Island Baby (1975) but they've long gone and I never replaced them in any other format (and may well do now even though both have truly dreadful sleeve art). After that we're into the minefield of solo Lou, albums I've never heard, albums I've swerved, albums I know via other people, albums with songs I know but haven't heard in full- all the way up to New York which like everyone else I bought and loved.
I own a copy of 1978's Street Hassle, a semi-legendary album if only for its impact on Spacemen 3 who borrowed from it heavily. The title track, a three song, eleven minute suite/ tone poem about New York street life, Lou Reed staple material but done so well with a line stolen from Brice Springsteen (who was recording downstairs at the same time, and who came up to sing the line- 'tramps like us, baby we born to pay'). It's a superb piece of music and there's no one else who could have made it.
Then there's The Bells, Growing Up In Public, The Blue Mask, Legendary Hearts, New Sensations, City Lights and Mistrial and frankly, in some of those cases your guess is as good as mine. But on the basis of my Lou Reed solo re- awakening and the spirit of rediscovery, I'm open to recommendations. I suspect The Blue Mask comes next.
In 1989 Lou released New York, an album that saw him back to his best and touring the songs to large and appreciative crowds I saw him at Wembley Arena, traveling down to London after my first year at university ended specifically to see the man play live. He made a comment on stage about all the music being played by 'real musicians, no samples or tapes', which many of us there sniggered at, our heads already turned by music made solely using samples, but hey it was Lou Reed. He played some of the hits too.
Last year Warp re- issued Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II, a four discs of vinyl album originally released in 1994. It followed the hugely acclaimed Selected Ambient Works 85- 92, the album which cemented Richard D. James' reputation as an auteur, a genius, a maverick and a colossal talent (much of which was evident on his very first 12" Analogue Bubblebath). SAW II is a very different album to SAW 85- 92. It is almost entirely beatless, a lengthy set of ambient music, slow moving tracks built on waves of sound, noise, subtle drones and hum, the sound of continents shifting slightly, of ice ages coming and going- minimalist dark ambient.
The album seems built to confuse. The majority of the tracks have no name, all titled 'untitled' and on digital releases were numbered #1, #2 etc, apart from #13 which is named Blue Calx. Many gained unofficial fan names- radiator, white blur 1, tree, stone in focus, lichen. The sleeve wasn't much help either. The eight sides of vinyl and individual tracks are represented by symbols (all of which are very similar to each other). If you took the four discs out of the sleeve and mixed them up, you'd be lost fairly quickly. It's not user friendly at all. The re- issue has added two tracks, both with actual names- th1[evnslower] and Rhubarb Orc. 1953 Rev.
James compared the album to listening to the sound of a power station while on acid. There's no doubt that listening to it is an immersive experience that can alter the way you feel. It is very much an album that encourages one to reflect and to contemplate, a serene, discombobulating, almost out of body experience. It's melancholic, spooky but ultimately, I think, filled with an eerie sense of humanity- or of nature maybe. The vinyl re- issue, four discs housed in a big sleeve with a poster and stickers, is a monolithic feeling release and came with a £50 price tag. I got some Christmas money from a relative and after a little dithering spent the money on Selected Ambient Works II, a decision I don't regret at all. It's a magnificent piece of work. This is ten sublime minutes of it...
We went to see A Complete Unknown on Saturday night. When we came home I dived into No Direction Home, Martin Scorcese's 2005 documentary (currently on the iPlayer) and since then have set about cherry picking my way around Bob's mid- 60s back catalogue. A Complete Unknown was really good. Timothee Chalamet is totally convincing as Dylan, the young Dylan arriving in New York in 1961 and the Dylan we see by the film's end, 1965 Dylan, gone electric. The attention to detail in the film- the sets, clothes, New York- are superb, early 60s New York brought to life vividly. The rest of the cast are good too- Ed Norton as Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Elle Fanning as Sylvie (as disguised Suze Rotolo) all stand out. There are some inaccuracies, the director taking a few artistic licences with what happened and where but it really doesn't matter (the famous shout of 'Judas' happened at Manchester's Free Trade Hall not the 1965 Newport Folk Festival). If 'print the legend' applies to anyone it's Bob Dylan.
A Complete Unknown is an exercise in velocity. Dylan is fast, in permanent motion, speeding his way through the city, through people and through scenes. He leaves people in his wake- the folk scene, Suze, Joan, the Newport folk purists, New York high society- living in a blur of forward momentum. When he becomes famous and is recognised in the street he retreats behind sunglasses, arming himself with barbs and sneers and protected by a few close to him (Bob Neuwirth). He rides a motorcycle- more speed (and we all know how that ends)- and though there's no drug taking seen in the film, his speed freak persona can't just fuelled by cigarettes (and everyone is smoking all the time). The only times he slows down slightly are when he's with Sylvie. Sylvie introduces him to the struggle for civil rights and CORE. He takes from that, writes songs, and then keeps moving.
His relationship with Joan Baez is spikey and combative- 'you're kind of an asshole', she tells him and later on kicks him out of her room in the Chelsea Hotel. The songwriting and performance scenes are totally convincing too, Chalamet more than able to portray the transition from 1961 folk Dylan and 1965. The scene in A Complete Unknown where he sings The Times They Are A- Changin' at Newport is genuinely moving. The furore around Dylan Goes Electric looks even more quaint now than it did in the past, the folk gatekeepers desperate to keep the future- rock 'n' roll, The Beatles, electricity, drummers- out of their world. The archive footage in Scorcese's film of British folk fans in Sheffield and Manchester complaining about Dylan's touring with his band as 'corny' and inauthentic is hilarious. Looking back at Dylan's songs in the 60s, it's clearly one perpetually moving body of work, from Song For Woody to Like A Rolling Stone.
Here's a folk era Dylan song (not actually in the film), One Too Many Mornings from 1964's The Times They Are A- Changin'.
I first encountered Bob Dylan in 1988, the autumn term in my first year at Liverpool university. We were hearing new music every day, every hour almost and much of it was revolutionary at the time. I heard Like A Rolling Stone on the radio and went out and bought three Dylan albums- all were available at CBS's Nice Price! promotion (less than a fiver). I bought Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits (a 1967 compilation with a cool cover photo and ten classics) and the pair of albums he made in 1965, released four months apart from each other- Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. Between them, those two albums are a pair of game changing records that re- wrote what music could be. Dylan's words are enough in themselves, a cast of characters, allusions, rhymes and imagery that are unequalled (in an end of year politics exam, a module on US politics, I quoted Dylan's line from It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) about the president of the United States sometimes having to stand naked. I was that kind of nineteen year old I'm afraid- I quoted Chuck D in the same essay. Pretentious, moi?! They let me progress onto the second year of the course too). He skewered culture, politics, society, consumerism, modern life. The music- some still based in acoustic guitar folk and some full electric mid 60s rock- is wild, alive and endlessly moving.
I'm not sure I can pick between Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. The former contains Maggie's Farm, a song Dylan nailed in a single take in the studio. At Newport it was the motherlode, the moment Dylan plugged in and pissed off the purists. Too loud. Too much. Mike Bloomfield's lead guitar. Pete Seeger and his supposed attempt to cut the power with an axe. It's the climax of A Complete Unknown. It's in Scorsese's documentary too. And it's here, introduced by Pete Seeger...
The Moonlandingz have returned with their first single in eight years. The Moonlandingz are a trio- Lias Saoudi (Fat White Family, Decius), Adrian Flanagan (Acid Klaus) and Dean Honer (All Seeing I, Add N To X)- and have cooked up The Sign Of A Man, with Lias in fine form on vocals over hyperactive Europop (not far musically from last year's Acid Klaus single on GLS). The video looks like New Order's True Faith crossed with Bauhaus (the design school not the goth band). It's all good fun and an album is promised later this year. There won't be many songs this year dissecting modern masculinity while containing the line 'if you take out the bins'.
Lias is busy with Decius as well. Birth Of A Smirk is the second single ahead of their second album out this Friday, a housed up song with with more 80s vibes, this time Visage but spliced with bleep techno. Everything Lias is involved with is gold- last year's Fat White Family album for a recent example, not mention last autumn's Decius single Walking In The Heat, in which Lias had fun cleaning the car.
Back in October I posted Tannis Root, a folky instrumental by Matt Deighton that appeared on a Moonboots Balearic compilation. Matt was in 90s Acid Jazzers Mother Earth, played with Paul Weller in his 90s bands and briefly filled in when Noel Gallagher walked out of Oasis. As well as all of that though, he's recorded several solo albums that I was aware of but hadn't heard. Someone said I should start with his 1995 album Villagers, handily re- released by Acid Jazz in 2021.
Villagers was Matt's debut solo album and in many ways an album out of time. Folk wasn't a big deal in the mid- 90s. Matt's influences on the album- Nick Drake, John Martyn, Bill Fay, Davy Graham- were largely unre- discovered. The album has a distinctive magic to it- folk guitars, low key, beautiful songs sung beautifully, some flute, all gentle and unassuming, and with the odd bit of Mod soul/ funk creeping in (you can hear why Weller employed him, especially on opening song Good For Us- but Weller was slightly folky too at this point too, not least on Wild Wood's title track). It's crossed the decades very nicely- thirty years since its release and the folk sound of Villager has come around, gone again and come back. This song, two songs really but played together as a medley, is as good as anything on it, ten minutes of bucolic English folk with a weariness to the tune and the words but with the hint of better days to come. You can listen to and buy the remastered Villager at Bandcamp.
Another Sunday mix of edits to follow the one from two weeks ago (here). The first one was quite thumpy. This one is more dubbed out, more blissed out and laid back, more drifty, featuring a similar and familiar cast of edit- creators. There's plenty of material unused sitting in my downloads folders too so volume three is only a matter of time.
The Los Lopez edit of The Jesus And Mary Chain's 9 Million Rainy Days first came my way well over a decade ago, 2013 I think, Jim and William's misanthropy/ existential despair set to an electronic throb. 'As far as I can tell/ I'm being dragged from here to hell/ All my time in hell is spent with you', Jim mutters (on 1987's Darklands originally). This is the diametric opposite of the feelings and sentiment expressed in the widescreen, gloriously romantic, panoramic love that propels the fourth track in this mix.
Jesse Fahnestock is 10:40. He recut a very early Verve song, One Way To Go (a B-side to the Wigan quartet's first release, the magnificent sky scraping northern psychedelia of All In The Mind). Jesse looped it up and set the controls for the heart of the dub. On hearing it I said to Jesse he should re- edit all of the early Verve's music as dub extravaganzas- A Dub In Heaven. I'm still waiting. His edit of The Beta Band's Inner Meet Me came out on Paisley Dark in 2021, a song from The Patty Patty Sound, one of those unearthly EPs The Beta Band released in 1997/ 1998 when they looked like the future of leftfield music, a completely new way of doing things.
Coyote's edit of Nocturn was one of my favourite records of 2022, a swooning, deep sea dive into the cosmos. Or something. Their Magic Wand edit releases, vinyl only, are always top drawer. I love the way it starts off with one beat and then switches tempo, like the speed selector being suddenly flipped from 33 to 45. Nocturn was on Kate's 2005 album Aerial. 'We stand in the Atlantic/ We become panoramic/ We tire of the city/ We tire of it all/ We long for that just something more'. Yep, I know that feeling.
Steppers Rock came out on the recently revived Eclectics label, based in Bournemouth and the start of what promises to be one to watch.
Totem Edits are the work of Leo Zero and Justin Deighton, a weekly treasure trove. Last week they dropped a Balearic/ cowboy stomp edit of Big Audio Dynamite's Medicine Show (an all timer of a song for me). Air (from a week earlier) is John Martyn's Solid Air recut beautifully. I've been in a John Martyn phase recently, Solid Air and One World. By all accounts a terrible and flawed person but the music...
Edit To The Siren performs the possibly sacrilegious feat of taking This Mortal Coil's Song To The Siren and turns it into a dubbed out/ late night Balearic treat. The work of In The Valley. Wobbly.
In Wim Wenders 1984 film Paris, Texas, Harry Dean Stanton wanders around the West Texas desert, disheveled and bewildered. He collapses in a convenience store and via his wallet he is identified as Travis Henderson. Travis' brother in Los Angeles is contacted and he comes and picks him up. He had not heard from Travis for four years and believed him to be dead. Gradually, the story unfolds. Travis is re- united with his son and then goes to Houston to look for Jane, Hunter's mother and Travis' ex (Nastassja Kinsky), who it turns out is working in a peep show club.
Paris, Texas is a very visual film. Harry Dean Stanton's face and baseball cap. The desert. Nastassja's blonde hair and bright pink jumper. The sunsets over L.A. Billboards and shop fronts. But it's also very much defined by its soundtrack, Ry Cooder's music, the Tex- Mex songs, the dialogue included in the soundtrack including the famous eight minute long 'I knew these people...' speech (and the point at which after Travis has talked to Jane on the phone at the peep show club for several minutes, Jane sighs, 'yep, I know that feeling', sampled by Andrew Weatherall on Screamadelica as the endnote of I''m Coming Down. I knew these people... was also sampled by The Orb and others).
As an album Ry Cooder's songs and score work on their own. Listening to it makes one want to watch the film again of course- never a bad thing. Ry Cooder's playing- slide guitar, Tex Mex blues, finger picking, reverb- is perfect, evoking Travis and Jane's loss and melancholy, and the vast emptiness of the desert. Wenders placed ambient microphones to pick up the sound of the desert and the wind. Cooder discovered the desert wind is in E- flat so he tuned all the instruments to that note, Cooder's guitar pitched to the key of the wind.
Cancion Mixteca is a Mexican folk song, written by Jose Lopez Alvarez between 1912 and 1915. It has become the song for many Mexicans who have left their homeland, a song of homesickness. In the film and on the soundtrack Harry Dean Stanton sings it, with Cooder on guitar and piano.
'So far am I from the land where I was born! Immense nostalgia invades my thoughts, and, to see myself, as lone and dismal as leaf on the wind, I would that I'd weep ‒ I would that I'd die ‒ out of sorrow!
O land of sunshine! I sigh for‐to see you. Now that, far from you, I live without light ‒ without love. And, to see myself, as lone and dismal as leaf on the wind, I would that I'd weep ‒ I would that I'd die ‒ out of sorrow!'
Massive Attack have re- circled into my musical orbit recently. 3D (Robert del Naja) turned sixty this week, as marked by Khayem at Dubhed, their music appeared on the TV the other night while watching the U.S.'s dystopian future become its present, and some friends saw them play live at the end of November (an experience described variously as 'dour as fuck', 'sensory overload' and 'amazing but a bit heavy in places'). When I go to Massive Attack I tend to reach for Blue Lines, Protection and No Protection but recently I've been revisiting some of the later parts of their back catalogue.
In 2010 Massive Attack released Heligoland, their fifth album, an album that saw the return of Daddy G to the band and a slew of guest vocalists and musicians- Damon Albarn, the almost ever present Horace Andy, Martina Topley- Bird, Guy Garvey, TV On The Radio's Tunde Adebimpe and Hope Sandoval. Hope sang on a song called Paradise Circus, one of the albums highlights, Hope's voice a sliver of light in Massive Attack's darkness. Not that the lyrics are remotely light- Paradise Circus is a song about sin and the devil. The shuffly trip hop drums and all pervading gloom are very slightly side lit by a piano and cinematic guitar line.
There was a follow remix package of remixes, extra tracks on the digital release with a very smart Gui Boratto remix of Paradise Circus, skippy beats, growly bass, guitars, strings and Hope's vocal.
Massive Attack waited six years before following Heligoland. In 2016 they put out a four track EP, Ritual Spirit, this time getting Tricky back on board along with Young Fathers, Roots Manuva and singer Azekel. The four tracks, out on 12" and all done and dusted in seventeen minutes, had them back at the peak of their 21st century powers. On the title track Azekel provides a gorgeous upper register vocal singing words that sound almost Shakespearean- 'Who'll mend this broke beat star? Whose strength do I speak of?'. The drums and strings simmer with the usual menace and disquiet.
Last week I wrote about Viva Hinds by Hinds, an album from 2024 that I got into at the start of this year following a tip off from a friend, JC (of The Vinyl Villain fame). This is the second album from 2024 that has sound tracked early 2025, another tip off, this time from Khayem at Dubhed. I've been a big fan of Seahawks for several years but their latest album had passed me by on release in early December. I bought it a month later, after hearing the title track Time Enough For Love.
In 2022 Seahawks (Pete Fowler and John Tye) arrived in L.A. to record with the intention of making 'an exploration of visionary California'. Both were struck down by illness, Fowler being hospitalised and bedridden. The album they made when they were better has the feel of a fever dream, a sense of drift and weightlessness that make the ten tracks feel very fluid- this liquid, post- sickness psychedelic ambience persists across the whole record, organs, synths and Fender Rhodes shimmering and bubbling. Everything feels like its just out of touch and slightly out of focus. The track above opens the album, washes of synth, the pitter patter of drums, a warm bass padding away and piano keys dappled on top.
A lot has happened in Los Angeles since Seahawks made this album. Some friends of this blog have been affected by the fires there this month. Today, after natural disaster, they wake up to day three of the Trump presidency part two. Good luck to all of you out there.
R.E.M.'s album Up is one I've developed a connection with recently. I found a copy on CD for £3 in a second hand shop early on in the new year (the one I bought years back I realised a while ago had gone missing somewhere along the line). It's an album I've often in the past found difficult to love but I know it also has its fans. This time around, playing it in the car while driving to and from work much of it struck a chord in a way it hasn't done before.
Up was released at the end of October 1998. This was a month before Isaac was born and he spent the first few weeks of his life in hospital so by the time I got my head back into music mode I think Up had passed me by. Other bands were doing for me what R.E.M. used to do- Grandaddy and Belle and Sebastian both spring to mind and I wasn't listening to that much guitar based music either. Also, R.E.M. weren't exactly selling Up. It was the first album without Bill Berry, got some mixed reviews and the making of it was problematic for the three existing members. Michael Stipe said in an interview that 'a dog with three legs is still a dog', which maybe wasn't the vote of confidence he thought it was.
Berry left the band after suffering an aneurysm on stage but told the other three that if it meant R.E.M. finishing, he'd stay- which put them in the position of having to carry on to allow Bill to leave. Not ideal. Peter Buck had been buying up synths and keyboards and was keen, as he often had been previously, to change the sound and do something different but the making of the album was fractious and they nearly split making it. The first song was written, recorded and mixed in a day (album opener Airportman) but after that they struggled. They couldn't rehearse without Berry and tried drum machines and session drummers (both on the songs on the album along with Buck drumming). Later on Stipe got a bad case of writer's block. Scott Litt, who produced their previous five albums, was gone too. Parts of Up feel and sound like they were written in the studio, clock ticking, the musicians having to come up with something, anything...
The previous album, New Adventures In Hi- Fi, had been written on the road at soundchecks and in hotel rooms. The writing process had been disrupted further by Berry's departure. He wasn't just the drummer but a key part of R.E.M.'s songwriting. Often Buck and Berry would play together, knocking ideas and arrangements around before Mike Mills would come in and add bass and organ. Now they were a three piece in the studio trying to make an album that embraced electronics. The sense of it being a bit incomplete or unfinished is added to by the inclusion on the album of several fairly non- descript songs that drift from start to finish. Quite a few of the songs end in a buzz of noise and feedback, as if they'd forgotten how to end a song. The last song, Falls To Climb, just sort of ends, an anti- climax of a song (and previous albums had had really strong closing songs- Electrolite, Find The River, Me In Honey- that felt like finales). Up also suffers from being fourteen songs and sixty six minutes long, a victim of the bloated 90s CD album, with extra time on the disc to fill. A ten track, two sided vinyl album could have been a much stronger album.
Despite all of this Up really has some moments and they struck me last week in the car. It was almost like hearing the album anew, it being so long since I'd heard it and not having any real emotional connection to it. Opener Airportman sets the tone, with ambient keys and noise,a Brian Eno like feel and Stipe singing of a man permanently in transit. Lotus is a strong song, Peter Buck's minimalist keys and live drums behind Stipe's surreal lyrics clicking together- a subtle groove, some hey heys, a gnarly guitar topline, and Michael singing in a deeper register, a step away from the rock star persona he'd had played with on Monster and New Adventures In Hi- Fi. No surprise it was the album's second single after the catchy and melodic pop- rock of Daysleeper.
Four songs in comes Hope, a distorted analogue keyboard sound repeating, the tip tap of a drum machine and Stipe at his most Stipe- like, a song about looking for something- meaning, friendship, something to do, a way to live and stay alive. There's some pre- millennial tension in there too. It's a song that catches fire, shifts the album forwards, shakes the bones a little.
Hope's rhythm and vocal were so close to Leonard Cohen's Suzanne they gave him a writing credit (although Suicide's organ sound is almost as much the basis of the song as Cohen). It has that melancholic hopefulness that R.E.M. were so good at. Cohen too.
Past Hope there's more songs that stood out for me- The Apologist (a song that could have been a Monster or New Adventures throwback to these ears), Sad Professor (acoustic guitars, echo, a character study) and the Patti Smith inspired Walk Unafraid, the only song on Up that actually sounds up, one that shows they really were looking for a new sound, to do something different and that despite all the difficulties they encountered recording Up the magic was still present.
Daysleeper sounds woozy, a slightly dislocated vocal that then swells with the music, Buck picking away at his guitar, a song for nightshift workers and their messed up rhythms. 'I cried the other night', Stipe sings at the breakdown, 'I can't even say why' and it sounds absolutely genuine.
Funny thing music isn't it. I've had a very ambivalent relationship with Up since 1998 and last week it really made some kind of sense to me- a flawed but interesting album with enough good songs to keep me letting it go back to the beginning when Falls To Climb ran out. It feels like maybe the last album they made where they really wanted to make art, to write songs that they cared about. After Up each album felt like they were making an album because that's what you do, because Warners wanted one, because they didn't know when or how to stop. Reveal, Around The Sun, Accelerate, Collapse Into Now- they have one or two songs each but are overworked or overproduced or a deliberate attempt to go back to basics. Each one seems like a case of diminishing returns and none of them feels right to me- but Up does.
Dean Wareham, ex- Galaxie 500, ex- Luna, solo artist and half of Dean and Britta, has a new album out at the end of March, That's The Price Of Loving Me. A single appeared last week ahead of it, a gloriously Velvets indebted slow paced guitar song, two chords and some cello and Dean's distinctive voice- You Were The Ones I Had To Betray. It's produced by Kramer who was at the controls back when Galaxie 500 were a going concern. It's a beautiful song, one that reveals a little more with each play.
Kramer had always wanted to make another record with Dean but it didn't happen until last year, the pair recording ten songs in six days in Los Angeles, with Kramer playing piano, organ and synths, Britta on bass and backing vox, cello from Gabe Noel and Dean upfront on vocals and guitar. There's a Nico cover on the album too, Reich der Traume (Realm Of Dreams) from 1981's Luul (recorded with Lutz Ulbrich).
In 2021 Dean released his second solo album, I Have Nothing To Say To The Mayor Of L.A. The title of the album was the first line sung on the album, in this song...
'The past is our plaything/ We're making it up as we go', he sings in that casual half sung/ half spoken delivery over some Lou Reed/ Sterling Morrison third Velvets album guitar chords. There are nine more Dean Wareham sung and played songs on that album, with Britta on bass, two covers (Scott Walker and Lazy Smoke), the usual deal, excellence as standard. Which reminds that there was a Galaxie 500 compilation out last year with a load of previously unreleased stuff on it, that I never got round to getting hold of.
David Lynch died last week aged seventy eight, as I'm sure most of the readers of this blog will know. He was a visionary artist, the director of film and TV that redefined what film and TV could be. His films- Eraserhead, Dune, Blue Velvet, Wild At Heart, Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway- all lit up the screen and took storytelling and cinema somewhere else. The dreamlike world he created, a sense of the surreal and the strange being just around the corner, live in the memory long after the credits have rolled. Twin Peaks reimagined what television could be and do.
Music was crucial to Lynch's film and visual world. Blue Velvet, 1986's psychological thriller/ film noir, was based around the Bobby Vinton song of the same name and any reference to the film- the cover of The Face magazine above for instance- will have the song playing in my head instantly...
Blue Velvet is one of those 50s songs that has a weird, trippy edge to it regardless of its association with David Lynch's film. It's place in the film just made it even more so. 1990's Wild At Heart, a black comedy/ road movie/ romance/ crime spree film, made a star out of Chris Isaak and his song Wicked Game.
Wild At Heart took Elvis, the 1950s, a snakeskin jacket, suggestions of the Wizard Of Oz and the stars Laura Dern and Nicholas Cave and wrapped them in a love story freak out. I saw it at the cinema in 1990 while a student in Liverpool, an afternoon screening that had us blinking in the daylight when we came out. My then girlfriend saw it with me and hated it (and made it clear during the film's duration)- it was very much a film that split opinions.
Twin Peaks is unimaginable without the soundtrack, not least Julee Cruise and Angelo Badalamenti's song Falling, that plays over the opening titles, a song that creates a dream world of its own and that sets the tone for everything that follows.
It's been sampled ever since its release in 1990 as have other parts of the Twin Peaks soundtrack and world. I've posted this before but its worth posting again- a Bedford Falls Players track from last year called Agent Cooper Coffee Dreams that takes Kyle MacLachlan and Twin Peaks and builds a wonky, electrifying cosmic house world around them. Find it here.
David Lynch was a music obsessive and frequently made and released his own music too, the '50s influences ever present along with his enduring love of the blues. Many of them are at Lynch's own Bandcamp page, the physical copies largely sold out but digital available. This one, The Big Dream, is the title track from a 2013 album, twelve modern blues songs, Lynch and his co- writer/ musician David Hurley (with Lykke Li singing on a bonus song) and a Bob Dylan cover (The Ballad Of Hollis Brown). Dusty blues, like some 21st century crossover of Tom Waits, Bobby Vinton, Jack White and Link Wray, but ultimately entirely Lynchian.
The whole album is at Bandcamp too along with various other Lynchworld releases.
Today's Sunday mix comes from the south of England and from Grant Williams who runs the independent label Eclectics which has recently re- entered the fray after a hiatus of a couple of years. The recent edit of The Residents (featured in my edits mix last Sunday, part two to come soon) can be found at Eclectics Bandcamp along with a, yep, eclectic range of releases including a James Bright EP, The Outside, that comes with Hardway Bros remixes, Warmth by Cole Odin and a Coyote release from 2017.
Grant hosts his Love Under Will radio show at 1BTN and last Sunday broadcast a two hour mix that is up at Mixcloud for those of us playing catch up. The two hours begins with Chris Rotter and his Bad Meat Club and the epic twenty three minute version of 86'ed that Chris recorded for Isaac when he died in November 2021 and then drifts off with some gorgeous electronic music- cosmic, ambient, space disco, dub and downtempo with tunes from Rhythm Doctor, Assab, Chris & Cosey and more.
The Totem Edits service run by Leo Zero and Justin Deighton threw another top class edit out into the ether on Friday, this one called Medicine, an eight minute edit of Big Audio Dynamite back in 1985 that shifts Mick, Don and the B.A.D. boys towards a dusty western stomp, appropriately enough given the sampling and lyrical content of the original and its all star video. Your Medicine is here.
In July 1979 Jimmy Carter, then President of the USA, faced with a declining economy, inflation, oil shortages and a hostage crisis in Iran, made a speech from the White House to the American people. The speech- The Crisis Of Confidence- became known as the 'malaise' speech. In it Carter spoke of the numerous challenges the USA faced, crises he dated back to the assassinations of both Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King in 1960s and the loss of confidence in politicians that Watergate had provoked.
Carter had met with a range of business, political, religious and academic leaders in an attempt to revitalise his government. The energy crisis and inflation were massive problems. Carter and his advisor Pat Caddell came up with the idea that the USA was facing not just an energy crisis, not just an inflation crisis but a crisis of confidence, that something fundamental had gone wrong that could not be fixed merely by legislation. In the Malaise speech he referred to conversations he'd had with other people- 'Mr President', he was told, 'we are facing a moral and spiritual crisis'. The entire speech, with Carter's solutions can be found here. This is the part that is most associated with the malaise-
'The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.
The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.
The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July.
It is the idea which founded our nation and has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else -- public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We've always believed in something called progress. We've always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own.
Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. Our progress has been part of the living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom, and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past.
In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.
The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.
As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.
These changes did not happen overnight. They've come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy.
We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate.
We remember when the phrase "sound as a dollar" was an expression of absolute dependability, until ten years of inflation began to shrink our dollar and our savings. We believed that our nation's resources were limitless until 1973, when we had to face a growing dependence on foreign oil.
These wounds are still very deep. They have never been healed. Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our nation's life. Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.
What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.
Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift. You don't like it, and neither doI'
At first many Americans responded positively to the speech, it struck a chord and polled well. But Ronald Reagan and his team, campaigning for the Presidential election that November, turned it around and used it to batter Carter (whose troubles just increased as the November election neared). 'I find no national malaise', Reagan said, 'I find nothing wrong with the American people'. This boosterism was one factor that propelled Reagan into the White House in January 1980. I was remained of the speech when Jimmy Carter died recently aged 100, the last President of the Roosevelt era and tradition.
It also reminded me of the film 20th Century Women, a 2016 film directed by Mike Mills (not the R.E.M. Mike Mills), one I've watched twice since it came out, a film set in Santa Barbara, California in 1979. Carter's speech is on the TV at one point, the crisis and malaise Carter articulates felt by some of the characters in the film. 20th Century Women is the story of an unconventional household, a middle aged woman Dorothea (Annette Bening) raising a fifteen year old son Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) in a large, ramshackle house also occupied by two lodgers, a young female photographer with cervical cancer and a middle aged male mechanic/ carpenter, plus Jamie's friend/ maybe girlfriend Julie (the trio played by Ella Fanning, Greta Gerwig and Billy Crudup). There is feminism, punk rock, Talking Heads, Black Flag, hardcore punk purism and violence, sexual encounters, a punk club in Los Angeles and an end of the 70s sense of things coming to a conclusion, an unclear terminus. In one scene at a skatepark Jamie gets beaten up for liking Talking Heads. Art, music and photography, are a key theme in the film, and the punk world is there as a door to somewhere else, to modernity, some kind of freedom, a way out- escapism too. It's a film about two generations of women at the end of the 1970s and how between them they try to raise Jamie as a modern male in the modern world. Carter's malaise speech is very much part of the film's world.
The soundtrack is packed with punk and New Wave artists, with songs by Talking Heads, The Clash, The Raincoats, Siouxsie and The Banshees, Germs, Suicide, Devo and Buzzcocks as well as the big band music of the 30s and 40s that Dorothea remembers from her pre- war youth. These three songs all fit not just in the film really well but also as a musical backdrop to Jimmy Carter's spiritual malaise and his assertion that 'piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose'.
Talking Heads debut album '77 featured this song, Don't Worry About The Government, a most un- punk song lyrically, a sentimental and optimistic celebration of civic leaders and community (although it can probably be read as satire too but I'm not sure that was necessarily Byrne's intention).
The Raincoats released Fairytale In the Supermarket in 1979, a 7" single on Rough Trade. It's a sardonic look at late 20th century life- love, time, books, how to live- while the trio play inspiring rattly, trebly, homemade post- punk.
Suicide's Cheree came out in 1978, essential synth punk rock. Martin Rev and Alan Vega were true innovators making existential music, punk rock without the guitars.
The film also has a score by American conductor, writer and musician Roger Neill, several pieces of music full of echo and reverb, wobbly cellos and E- bowed guitars. This one, Santa Barbara 1979, is from the film's opening scenes, a lovely, warm ambient incantation.
Mogwai have been making records since 1997 and just seem to be get better and better if mellowing somewhat from the noise terrorism sound of their earlier days. Time passes and their sound evolves and they make music that is recognisably Mogwai while finding something new with each release. Their forthcoming album, The Bad Fire, is out at the end of the month and this single slipped out a week ago- Fanzine Made Of Flesh. It has a song structure and vocals, something they've added in recent years (see the equally beautiful songs Richie Sacramento, We're Not Done and Party In The Dark from three previous albums). The vocals on Fanzine Made Of Flesh are fed through a vocoder, layered over soaring, churning guitars and driving drums and bass. Members of the band have been through some difficult times in recent years and the music, emotive and moving, reflects this. They also have a knack of coming up with brilliant song titles that usually have nothing to do with the song whatsoever.
My friend Spencer sends me music fairly regularly and often things I'd missed or hadn't heard for years. Recently he sent me a link to a new single by Throwing Muses, a new song called Summer Of Love, from an album coming in March titled Moonlight Concessions. Summer Of Love's lyric deals with a wager Kristen Hersch made with a man for a dollar around the idea that the seasons don't change us. The bet was lost. Kirsten says the man said, 'we aren't just planted here, stagnant, we're in flux, responding to love like octopuses moving across the ocean floor'. 'Turns out here was right', she adds, 'and I still owe him a buck'.
Throwing Muses never really went for the obvious with the words or music. Summer Of Love is three minutes of off kilter acoustic guitar and hushed vocals, cello and a noisy guitar solo, leftfield indie- Americana with a brooding, baroque feel.
I don't think I even knew they'd reformed. released an album in 2003, one in 2013 with Tanya Donelly back in the fold and then another in 2020. I haven't been paying attention obviously. I'm not sure I've even thought about Throwing Muses for a very long time. The first album I bought by them was Hunkpapa back in 1989, the band's third. It came out on 4AD and in 1989 anything on 4AD was worth listening to. The artwork alone was worth the price of admission but also in '89 Pixies had released two essential albums in a year with 4AD and there were albums from Pale Saints, Ultra Vivid Scene and Lush in the same year. The consensus now seems to be that Hunkpapa smoothed off some of the rough edges that the group's previous two albums contained but I remember thinking Hunkpapa was really good at the time. The lead single from it was Dizzy, classic late 80s Ameri- indie, catchy folk- pop with a snarl and a endlessly circling guitar riff.
Two years later they came back with The Real Ramona, an album I still have on vinyl- I took it out last night. It's still in really good condition and possibly hasn't been played since 1991. The single Counting Backwards preceded it, another catchy, off kilter song from Kirsten Hersh who had a pretty singular world view. Throwing Muses pitched up at BBC2's The Late Show in March '91, a programme that mixed culture arts and politics and had a slew of great bands playing live. They played two songs, Counting Backwards and Two Step, and show what a good live band they were.
In response to a post two weeks ago about Fac 15, a poster for the joint Factory and Zoo festival held in a field in near Leigh in 1979, the line up of which included the great and the good of the north west post- punk era (Echo and The Bunnymen, Joy Division, The Teardrop Explodes, ACR, Orchestral Manoeuvres) and some of the lesser known (Lori and The Chameleons, X- O- Dus, The Distractions, Elti- Fits and Crawling Chaos), Ernie from 27 Leggies asked about the last two and their current status in the 'Where Are They Now?' file. I promised a post on Crawling Chaos.
When New Order played their first after the death of Ian Curtis, an unannounced gig at The Beach Club at Oozits in Shudehill on 29th July 1980, Bernard Sumner, very uncomfortable with the role of frontman and singer, introduced the new band (billed as the No Names after Belgian factory act The Names pulled out) with something along the lines of, 'hello, we're New Order, our mates couldn't make it, we're the last surviving members of Crawling Chaos'. Which was a slightly bizarre announcement under the circumstances but things were tense. Crawling chaos was possibly for Bernard a description of the band and their world following Ian's suicide and their early attempts to carry on, to play live with temperamental equipment and a new set of songs. But Crawling Chaos was also a band who'd released a single on Factory.
Crawling Chaos were from Tyneside- Ashington in Northumberland to be exact (also the birthplace and childhood home of world cup winners the Charlton brothers, and Manchester United's Bobby Charlton, another Ashington boy who ended up in Manchester). They formed in 1977, the pairing of Doomage Khult and Strangely Perfect (maybe not their real names) meeting at school and were named in homage to HP Lovecraft and the Cthulhu mythos. Punk inspired, avant garde, free flowing jams became post- punky new wave. Gigs were often improvised affairs. At some point, after a gig at a hotel in Whitley Bay, a contact was pursued via Tyne Tees TV and word got to Tony Wilson at Granada. Wilson offered to put them on at the Leigh Festival and demo tapes were sent to the fledgling Factory label. Apparently Martin Hannett hated them immediately. As did some of the other Factory movers and shakers.
In 2005 Wilson was interviewed by James Nice (an interview now at Electronic Sound), including being asked about his relationship with Joy Division manager Rob Gretton. Wilson said-
“There were times when it did come to fisticuffs. In the early days, for example, there was a band called Crawling Chaos, who were from Newcastle and they were crusties before crusties existed. They used to take the piss out of Joy Division going, ‘Oh, Joy Division, you think you’re fucking great, don’t you?’. So I would try to book Crawling Chaos for every Joy Division gig I possibly could and there was one night at the Russell Club when suddenly, there it was, it was Joy Division and Crawling Chaos supporting. And Rob came up to me in the upstairs bit, where we served curried goat and peas, and went, ‘Very funny that, Tone’. And I went, ‘I thought you’d like it Rob’. At which, Rob nutted me and, as I went down, he kneed me in the balls. So the fact that there was occasional violence was relevant.
They seem to have divided opinions, described at Discogs by a user as 'the boys you loved to hate' and a band who could never make their mind up about what they wanted. In 1980 Factory released a Crawling Chaos single, Fac 17.
A synth intro which suggests something very Factory is about to follow but doesn't- trebly guitars kick in, there's a snarly, punkish vocal, and a dense, compressed sound. The topic of the lyrics seems to be sexually transmitted infections as opposed to sexual prowess.
The booklet that accompanies the 2008 Factory Records: Communications 1979- 92 box set describes Crawling Chaos as 'pranksters' and 'heavy modern' and includes an unflattering, contemporary review of the band's performance at Leigh. They went on to release an album in 1981, Homunculous Equinox, on Foetus Products and then in 1982 an album on Factory Benelux called The Gas Chair. Three more albums followed in the 80s, the last a self released c90 cassette called Cunt. It seems that for a while the band also ran a club night in Newcastle. By the time they released Sex Machine the members included Martin Rees, Jeff Crowe, David Halton, Garry Clennell and Eddie Fenn and others have come and gone over the years, including initially Dave Cook & Steve Smith (but both had left by the time the Factory single came out).
The answer to the question 'Where are they now? is a little unclear. In 2012 an album called Spookhouse came out, the last ever Crawling Chaos recordings dating from 1987. However, there is a website here which is a treasure trove of posts, myths, opinions, quotes, reviews, photographs and more. I can recommend the Myths tab for more information, a page last updated in July 2023 under the heading 'Crawling Chaos History: Myths passing as Truth, revealed'. Judging by the replies to the comments the website seems to be run by Strangely Perfect. So, as far as I can tell, that's where they are now.
As ever at the start of a new year I get into an album (or two) that came out the previous year. This is one reason why end of year lists are a good thing, tip offs and nudges about things that one has missed, overlooked or just didn't get round to. In December JC at The Vinyl Villain ran a series of posts featuring ten albums he'd enjoyed in 2024, one of which was Viva Hinds by Hinds. I listened to a couple of songs and on my trip into town to do some record shopping with some Christmas money bought it on vinyl (clear vinyl with a splattered pink centre plus free signed postcard) from the lovely people at Piccadilly Records.
Hinds are from Spain, four young women making sparky garage/ indie rock. They made three albums between 2011 and 2020, including a wonderful cover of The Clash's Spanish Bombs and then two of the fonder members quit, the management departed, leaving the vocals and guitar duo of Carlotta Cosials and Ana Garcia Perotte wondering what to do. They regrouped, wrote some songs, hired a house in France to record in and came back with Viva Hinds, a short but very sweet album, ten songs in thirty four minutes (with help from Beck and Grian Chatten on two of the songs). Faced with a load of upheaval and departures Hinds seemed to decide that the best thing to do was dance and sing. The songs are light on their feet, with singalong verses and choruses, melodic guitars and synths, veering from moody to poppy, a celebration of friendship and the band and life. This one saw them draft Grian Chatten in to share vocals, the spindly guitars and rattly drums a brilliantly ramshackle backdrop to the two voices.
The internet sometimes delivers sheer randomness. Scrolling absentmindedly last week I came across a pop duo from the mid- 80s I hadn't thought about since, well, since the mid- 80s I imagine. Vicious Pink were a boy/ girl pair who started out as backing vocalists for Soft Cell. Singer Josephine Warden and keyboardist Brian Moss struck out on their own with a run of singles starting in 1982 and going through to 1986 with a self titled album that year. They recently reformed and have released two albums, one in 2022 and one in 2024. The song that appeared in front of me last Friday was this one, a seven minute extended mix of a 1984 single.
Stuttering vocals, ghostly backing vox choirs (sampled Cold War Russians apparently), boxy drum machines (that 80s favourite the Linn drum), Roland synths, a certain mid- 80s dance/ pop charm. I could almost imagine it being played at some club nights now.
Take Me Now came out as a single in 1986, electronic dance pop with, pumping drums and bass, over the top '86 production, suggestive lyrics and a, um, memorable sleeve. If you've got it, flaunt it etc.
There have been a lot of really good edits out in the wild over the last few years and the thought of slinging a bunch of them together into a Sunday mix became irresistible. In the fifty five minutes below you'll find various artists from the last sixty years of popular culture re- edited and rejigged into new shapes including Gil Scott Heron, Gordon Lightfoot, The Residents, Voice Of Africa, Monsoon, Siouxsie and The Banshees and Les Negresses Vertes. This mix is only part of the story- volume 2 (and maybe 3) will follow shortly.
Western Revolution was released on 12" vinyl only, part of Coyote's Magic Wand Special Editions Volume 2, along with Lonely and two other edits (Love Home and Luca). Western Revolution is a live sounding, laid back groove with the unmistakeable voice of Gil Scott Heron advising us about the results of the revolution and theta there will be 'no re- run, brothers and sisters, the revolution will be live'. Lonely picks up where Monsoon's 1981 single Ever So Lonely left off and extends it out.
Totem Edits have become fairly essential recently, a page at Bandcamp for the edit work of Leo Zero and Justin Deighton (with plenty of input from Sean Johnston). One to watch. I posted Feel fairly recently, lovely drawn out funky folk built around a 1967 Gordon Lightfoot song, The Way Feel. Totem Edit 03 has Voice Of Africa's 1990 Balearic beat smash Hoomba Hoomba close to its core. Totem Edits 14 is one of my favourite recent edits from the pair, a wonderfully absorbing version of Les Negresses Vertes' 1989 French punk/ folk/ Balearic song Zobi La Mouche.
Resident Rockers is part of a two track EP on the recently reinvigorated Eclectics label, San Francisco avant garde/ art punk rockers/ giant eyeball headgear wearers The Residents bent into new shapes by someone very familiar to this blog. Find Eclectics and the EP here.
Jezebell are masters of the edit, a sample forming the basis of a completely new track, something old being reworked into something new. Trading Places was a six track pair of EPs from 2023, split into two parts, daytime and nighttime versions. In the 6PM take Siouxsie Sioux's Peek- A- Boo gets reworked and taken for a spin round the floor.
In 2015 Mojo Filter, an edit veteran, took The Banshees 1981 single Arabian Knights, Siouxsie's post punk psychedelia re- jigged into new shapes. Going from Peek- A- Boo to Arabian Knights seemed like too good an opportunity to miss.
I watched Wings Of Desire over the Christmas holiday- it was on one of the many Channel 4 channels having been remastered and restored in 2022. It's a film I haven't seen since it came out in 1989 and am pretty sure I've only seen once before (probably at Liverpool University film club which had a long running mid- week film night I used to go to in '88 and '89).
Wings Of Desire was made by Wim Wenders, a mark of quality in itself, and is set in West Berlin in 1989 (the events of November 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent break up of the Eastern Bloc and the USSR don't appear in the film at all, no hint of a major shift in geo- politics. The Berlin Wall does feature in the film and West Berlin's unique feel and status are undeniably an important aspect of the film. Interestingly, much of West Berlin is semi- derelict with shots of vast areas of waste ground in what is now central Berlin, Potsdammerplatz for example). The film is in German mainly, subtitled, with brief bits of conversation in English (especially when Columbo, Peter Falk, features). It's shot mainly in beautiful black and white with some scenes in equally beautiful colour. Wenders cinematography and eye for a shot is second to none. It's also very slow, especially by modern cinema's standards, a film that feels like for long periods nothing much happens, the main characters drift around a lot, contemplating and deliberating.
The film centres of two angels, one played by Bruno Ganz (best known to British audiences for his portrayal of Hitler in Downfall), who populate West Berlin and are invisible to adults but can be seen by children, listening to the thoughts of West Berliners, occasionally intervening to comfort humans in distress, sometimes failing to prevent people from spiraling. Many of the people in the film seem to be alone, estranged from family and friends, everyone isolated in a city isolated from the rest of the country. A circus is in town and the angel Bruno Ganz plays falls in love with the trapeze artist, a woman played by Solveig Dommartin, and wants to become mortal so he can feel human pleasures. A film about the Second World War is being filmed, starring Peter Falk, who knows the angels are there even though he can't see them. At times, shots of Berlin from 1945 newsreel are cut into the film. The black and white scenes, including some shot inside the enormous modernist West Berlin library and some sot near the Wall, are the world as seen by the angels. The colour scenes are the world as seen by humans. I'll leave my plot synopsis there- no spoilers.
The soundtrack is mainly by Jurgen Knieper who wrote much of the score and then re- wrote much of it having been shown rushes by Wenders. It's an ambient/ instrumental score with found sounds and dialogue from the film which works well as a standalone. This is Der Himmel Uber Berlin (The Sky Above Berlin), a haunting and rather lovely five minutes which sounds exactly like the soundtrack to angels on the rooftops of buildings at the frontline of The Cold War should sound.
Wim Wenders said he couldn't make a film in West Berlin in the late 80s and not include Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. The Bad Seeds appear in colour and in black and white, the characters turning up at a gig in a dilapidated dancehall. In this scene (in colour) Bruno Ganz arrives at the club while Nick and the boys play The Carny. Solveig is on the crowd too. Then they play From Her To Eternity, throbbing, restless, junkyard blues, young Nick Cave at the stage's lip in full heroin preacher mode playing to West Berlin's goth/ punk/ alternative underworld. Otto Sander, another angel, appears on stage.
Bad Seed guitarist Rowland S. Howard had a second band, Crime And The City Solution. They also appear in Wings Of Desire, playing the ominous Six Bells Chime, a sort of West Berlin/ Weimar Spaghetti Western song. Roland spins round the stage wielding guitar and cigarette. Solveig dances, The angels listen in.
The soundtrack features both bands with nine Jurgen Knieper pieces of music, snippets of conversation and dialogue from the film (just as the soundtrack to Wender's Paris, Texas did), plus several other pieces of music (expanded on CD), a soundtrack works really well away from the film as well as part of it. Both film and soundtrack are moving, atmospheric and have something to say about the human condition. What more could you want?
Ride/ GLOK guitarist/ writer/ singer Andy Bell has returned this week with a cover of I'm In Love With A German Film Star, the 1981 single by The Passions (retitled I'm In Love... by Andy). For the single Andy's got Dot Allison in on vocals, a song totally suited to Dot's style, and Michael Rother on guitar. It shimmers and floats, with fuzz guitars drifting in, and does all the things you'd want it to.
The song comes ahead of an album, Andy's third solo album, out at the end of February- Pinball Wanderer. Andy's solo work outside Ride, two albums (The View From Halfway Down and Flicker) plus his GLOK albums and singles, have been some of my favourite releases of the last five years so I'm looking forward to this one. In his promo blurb to accompany the single Andy said that for the album he went less is more, 'less tracks, more atmosphere, less layers of instrumentation, more vibes.' What's more, if you go to Bandcamp, there is a 12"/ digital release of the single with remixes by Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s and GLOK (Andy as GLOK remixing Andy as Andy). All three remixes are top drawer.
The Passions original is one of those songs that seems to exist in a world of its own. Released in January 1981, it was written by singer Barbara Gogan about Steve 'Roadent' Connelly, some time Clash and Sex Pistols roadie who had some minor roles in some German films.
This EP from 2016 came my way back in December, four tracks by Hugh Mane on an EP called Control Drama. Hugh Mane, I realised eventually, is a play on words, and the person credited with writing the tracks is one M. Gilbert but other than that I know little. However the person responsible for these four slices of is clearly someone with a background in house, acid, cosmische, and expert knowledge in the space of dub and the timing of techno. The four tracks sit somewhere in a sweet spot between all of these but somewhere else too- an intersection of soulful, laid back, slow motion loveliness, decorated with bird song and warm synth melodies. It's dance music in its origins but definitely designed for home listening as much as out. Get the EP here.
There are a slew of Hugh Mane releases at his/ their Bandcamp page. At the tail end of 2023 Hugh put out another four track EP, this one with Dan from Idjut Boys on board with drum programming, Phased Harmony. More deep sounds for home listening. Find it here.
