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 two 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

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. 

Midnight Versions

Much of what I've posted here over the last month has been new music. It always used to seem that August was a bit of a quiet time, a dead zone in the music industry, nothing much released, everyone waiting for the big rush of autumn releases- but over the last month I've posted new music from Adrian Sherwood, Jezebell, Statues, The Lemonheads, The Charlatans, The Orb, ddwy, Jazxing, Puerto Montt City Orchestra, 100 Poems, Sewell And The Gong, Daniel Avery, Factory Floor, Number, Jay- Son, Byron Carignan, Luke Schneider, Florecer and senses remixed by GLOK. There's probably loads I've missed too and I've got several other new releases noted down to be posted in the upcoming days and weeks. 

All of this is a good thing obviously, new music to be enjoyed and absorbed, but it also possibly makes the posts a little perfunctory sometimes- there isn't always a lot of context or narrative, just me saying, 'here's some new music, I like it, I think you might like it too', and then some kind of attempt at describing said music. The sheer amount of new music also means that sometimes it feels like one listens to something new a lot for a few days and then move on to the next new thing and then on again, a flow that can feel like a flood, and there's a danger that stuff gets lost further upstream behind me/ us. 

This came out yesterday, a new version of a Daniel Avery single that came out two weeks ago. Rapture In Blue is the first single from his new album that comes out at the end of October (with a gig in Manchester the same night). It has Cecile Believe on vocals and guitar from Andy Bell and sounds better with each listen, a 2025 goth- pop/ dance rhapsody, a slow burning rush. The Rapture In Blue (Midnight Version), out at Bandcamp, is a re- imagined version,, made for darker corners and specifically for the club, to shake the floor in DJ sets- that doesn't stop it from sounding good at home though. The pop dynamics and mid- 80s film feel is dialed down and stripped back, with drums and bass toughened and isolated and Cecile's vocal isolated on top. There are whooshes, industrial clangs, shuddering synth breakdowns and stuttering vocal parts. I already like it as much as the original. I'm anticipating that as the album release draws nearer and more songs are released ahead of it, there may be more Midnight Versions too. 

Midnight occurs in thousands of song titles- a search of my downloads folder brings up hundreds. In May Peaking Lights and Coyote released an EP called Love Letters/ So Far Away, three beautifully hazy, dubby tracks. Back in 2012 Peaking Lights remixed their entire Lucifer album as a dub version and Midnight Dub is as good as anything they have done before or since. Gloriously blissed out, wonky dub- pop. 

Midnight Dub

Baltic Fleet is a one man band from Warrington, named after a famous waterfront pub in Liverpool. Paul Fleming played keys and synths for Echo And The Bunnymen and built up a repertoire of songs that he released as a self- titled debut album, Towers, in 2008, followed by Towers (2012), The Wilds (2013) and The Dear One (2016). Midnight Train is from Towers, a chiming, synth- led instrumental, the autobahns of mid- 70s West Germany crossing over to the M62. 

Midnight Train

Finally, a third midnight song, this one from 1987, a single by Creation group The Weather Prophets- Midnight Mile was the B-side to Why Does The Rain although by this point they'd jumped from Creation to Elevation, a Creation offshoot label that Alan McGee set up in conjunction with major label WEA- a major label funded indie that was supposed to benefit from better distribution, and hoped that the better sales would siphon money back to Creation to invest in other artists. 

Midnight Mile is very typical of the period between the end of The Smiths and the dawn of acid house/ indie dance, Pete Astor's '87 jangle- pop confessional produced by Lenny Kaye. 

Midnight Mile

Elevation eventually folded. WEA expected an instant return and hit singles, something The Weather Prophets didn't/ couldn't provide and singles by Primal Scream and Edwyn Collins didn't either. McGee later said setting up Elevation was the biggest mistake he made. Such was the indie scene in 1987 that bands who left the indie nest often lost their original fans who saw major label money as evidence of selling out.  Nowadays everyone and anyone can release songs immediately via Bandcamp (or other services), on their own and cut out the middle man/ record label completely- although the returns are pretty low and not everyone, or many, can make a living out of it. 

Breathy Drops/ Broken Heart

Florecer are a Californian duo who make dreamy, blissed out music that treads the beaches of Balearica. Their latest track is Breathy Drops, a tribute to the bioluminescence of the Pacific Ocean and about giving into the unknown- something they achieve with a few drums pads, some synths, a drip- drop melody and a whispery vocal, and an acoustic guitar. Label boss Chris Coco said it was a track he could imagine Alfredo playing if he was still on the decks at the Cafe del Mar and it does sound exactly like that. Lovely stuff- buy it here. 

The tonal flipside of Breathy Drops is this, a GLOK/ Andy Bell remix of have you ever had a broken heart? by senses (all lower case) that came out at the end of May and which I missed posting back then. 

Like Florecer's track there's a West coast USA connection but this feels like the dark side of the Pacific as opposed to Florecer's pastel/ dayglo haze. Andy did his remix while getting over some West Coast jetlag and the track sounds a bit woozy and jetlagged, slow mo drums and bass, slowly dripping guitar lines and the voice asking the question in the title over and over... You can buy the EP digitally and on green 10" vinyl here. 

Monday's Long Song

Luke Schneider, the pedal steel guitarist from Nashville who makes ambient- Americana, has a new album out later this month and this nearly ten minute long meditation came out last week ahead of it- For Dancing In Quiet Light. The pedal steel rings out over the top of a gorgeous ambient wash, layers of gentle drones pulsing and radiating. Find it at Bandcamp. 

Coincidentally I had this lined up to post, a much shorter one off track from September 2024 that I missed called midafternoon classic that leans more towards the Americana, the pedal steel joined by a nylon string guitar and some harmonica with the ambient that sounds exactly like its title suggests it should. 

Forty Seven Minutes Of Italian Library Music 1969- 1976

Today's post keeps my post- holiday Italian theme rolling with a forty seven minute mix courtesy of Heroin In Tahiti, created, mixed and posted back in summer 2012 and sent to me for my listening pleasure while I was in Italy by my friend Spencer. It is an esoteric and experimental but totally accessible way to spend three quarters of an hour, some splendid vintage Italian soundtrack music, oddities, space age/ sci fi sounds, analogue ambient, jazz- tinged sounds- there are Moogs and other synths, pianos, cellos, all kinds of percussion, double bass and a pervading sense of strangeness. You can listen to Musica Per Sonorizzazioni at Soundcloud and I can't think of a better way to enjoy your Sunday morning continental breakfast. Here's the tracklist...

• Amedeo Tommasi: Radiazioni
• Bruno Nicolai: Diffidenza
• Daniele Patucchi: La Dimostrazione
• Giuliano Sorgini: Fabbrica Spaziale
• Piero Umiliani: Danza Magica
• Silvano Chimenti: Colori
• Mario Nascimbene: Rito Pagano
• Gerardo Iacoucci: Alchemie & Alambics
• Amedeo Tommasi: Mondo Industriale
• Amedeo Tommasi: Bollicine
• Alessandro Alessandroni & Romolo Grano: Per Un Eroe Caduto
• Ennio Morricone: Alternance
• Armando Sciascia: Calm Sea
• Floriana Bozzalla: Vento Cosmico
• Giorgio Carnini: Diorama e Recitativo
• Piero Umiliani: Arabian Synthesizer
• Nico Fidenco: Industrial Feeling
• Bruno Nicolai: Giano
• Fabio Fabor: Caronte
• Amedeo Tommasi & Stefano Torossi: Superpotenza
• Romano Rizzati: Azimut
• Piero Umiliani:Pellegrinaggio al Totem
• Alessandro Alessandroni: SOS Spaziale
• Egisto Macchi: Chanson de la Nuit
• Guglielmo Papararo & Vittorio Montis: Jonosfera

Heroin In Tahiti are/ were an Italian occult psychedelic duo from Rome, active between 2010 and 2017 whose music crossed the borders between psyche, soundtracks, Morricone, prog, Beat poetry and Italian folklore- a style they called Spaghetti Wasteland. I haven't gone very far into their back catalogue yet but there are sounds worth further investigating here (their 2015 album Sun And Violence) and three other albums scattered round the internet too. This is Black Market from Sun And Violence, the sound of underground, psychedelic Roma. 

Soundtrack Saturday

Italian band Goblin have been releasing soundtracks since 1975 and still tour. Their music is a fusion of prog, metal and jazz- rock but don't let that put you off. They make the perfect musical accompaniment to the horror/ slasher/ suspense films that Italian director Dario Argento specialised in. Their debut was the score to Profondo Rosso in 1975, released as a half hour soundtrack album (and re- released in 2005 in an expanded format). The title track was released as a single and went to the top of the Italian charts, its vampy organ chords, rumbling, nimble bass, synth notes and crashing drums finding an audience in mid- 70s Italia and beyond. 

Profondo Rosso 

Death Dies is frenetic prog rock, the drums and horns battling with the guitars, a stop- start masterpiece. 

Death Dies

In 1977 Goblin provided the score to Suspiria- Mellotron, bazouki, tabla, Fender Rhodes, Moog synths, all finding space in the mix. DJ Shadow was surely listening two decades later. Suspiria is a supernatural thriller telling the story of a young American ballet dancer who takes up a place at a prestigious European dance academy but following a series of murders comes to the awful realisation that it is a front for a coven of witches. Don't you just hate it when that happens? 

Suspiria

Dario Argento's Zombi- Dawn Of The Dead came out in 1978, a re- edited version of George A. Romero's original zombie classic. Argento got Goblin in to re- score the film. There followed a slew of zombie films that claimed to be the sequel to Romero's original, an Italian movie sub- genre in itself- not a field I'm an expert in admittedly but Goblin's soundtracks and scores are fantastic. In 2018 this Zillas On Acid edit of Safari came out, Goblin re- tooled for the modern dancefloor, a delicious reworking that fills the dark corners. 

Safari (Zillas On Acid Edit)

Raise Your View Of Heaven

There's nothing like coming back to a grey northern English August to bring a holiday abruptly to an end but as people say, 'don't be sad it's over, be happy it happened'. Italy was a delight in every way from the busy streets of Napoli to the epic nature and scale of Pompeii, the Bay of Naples and everything around overshadowed by Mount Vesuvius, to the beauty of the Amalfi Coast and its seaside towns. The picture at the top of the post was our view for five days, across the valley from or accommodation on the hillside in Pukara, Tramonti, the road to Maori way below us. 

Naples is a busy city with an energy very much its own. It's also filled with reminders that their football club, SSC Napoli, won Serie A in June, only the fourth time they've done so. Two of the previous championships were in the 1980s and due to the feet and brains of Diego Maradona, a man who has attained the status of deity in Napoli. 

Rock Section (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

In 2014 Julian Cope wrote some music to go with the fictional bands in his novel One Three One, 'a time shifting, Gnostic hooligan, road novel', set partly at the Italia '90 World Cup. It's a brilliant and wild read. The fullest realisation of the music came with the track named after the book's main character, Rock Section, which came with an Andrew Weatherall remix as a result of Weatherall's status as artist in residence at Faber and Faber, a post created for him by Lee Brackstone. Weatherall and Cope- what's not to like?

Rock Section was credited to Dayglo Maradona (a cover of a 1979 song by the also fictional Skin Patrol). For that name alone, Cope is a genius. The remix is one of those ones from his purple patch in the 2010s with Tim Fairplay as assistant knob twiddler and engineer. Faber and Faber released 250 copies on white vinyl. It's very rare but there's a copy on Discogs currently priced at £164.95 (plus shipping). Synth arpeggios, motorik drum machine beats, endless forward progression.

I could write about Pompeii and Herculaneum at length- maybe at some point soon I will. Both are awe inspiring places and to stand in their streets, at the shop counters, in the entrance halls and rooms of the villas and houses, to walk up the steps of the theatre and stand in the Forum, is to feel a direct link with the people of two thousand years ago who were surely just like us in many ways. They worked, they went to the shops to buy bread, spent their money on entertainment and wine, and if they could afford it bought paintings and pictures for their walls. The sheer scale of Pompeii is on its own mind blowing. We spent four hours there, wandering round the streets of the city and found something to discover on every corner. 

After a couple of days on the outskirts of Napoli we rented a car and after a stop off at the two Roman sites drove south to the Amalfi coast. Driving in Italy is not for the faint hearted and the roads over the mountains to Amalfi are an experience in themselves. Maiori and Minori are seaside towns, popular with the Italians as holiday destinations and we loved both (Maiori was closest to us and our main base for five days). I could have stayed longer- much longer. Italy is a beautiful country. 

More to follow. In the meantime this record celebrated thirty five years since its release this week in 1990. Thirty five years is ridiculous isn't it? It sounds too modern, too recent, to be three and a half decades old. And if you want to really fry your head thirty five years before that, it was 1955- the dawn of rock 'n' roll. 

Raise was the debut release by Bocca Juniors (and there's another Napoli/ Maradona link- Bocca Juniors are the Argentinian club Diego played for before his move to Europe in 1982, first to Barcelona and then to Napoli). The musical Bocca Juniors were Andrew Weatherall, Terry Farley, Pete Heller and Hugo Nicholson with vocals by Anna Haigh and a rap by Protege. 

Raise (63 Steps To Heaven) (Redskin Rock Mix)

Raise is summer of 1990 writ large, a huge dance tune with massive piano riff (cribbed from Jesus On The Payroll by Thrashing Doves but I think that that riff was re- purposed and beefed up from elsewhere, a house record whose name I've temporarily forgotten). Weatherall wrote the lyrics, partly borrowing from Aleister Crowley- 'do what they wilt shall be the whole of the law'- and partly a stand up and be counted throw down, 'Raise your hands if you think you understand/ Raise your standards if you don't'. It's a fantastic, huge sounding, grin inducing record. Bocca Juniors would go on to make another single, Substance, in 1991 and then Andrew split, deciding to go it alone and 'not make records by committee', choosing a different, less well trod and less well lit path. Not the last time he did that.