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 fist 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.
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.
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.
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.
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