Coloured Lights, Smoke, Music

On Saturday night The Flightpath Estate DJ team (me, Martin and Dan this time, the Flightpath's northern branch) supported Pye Corner Audio and Shunt Voltage at The Yard in Cheetham Hill, north of Manchester city centre, a gig put on by Paul Watt and Beautiful Burnouts. The Yard is a lovely venue, an old Victorian building turned into a one room gig space and was close to sold out, 250 tickets sold. We had three slots- an hour before Shunt Voltage (an ambient/ dub hour), a twenty minute interval between the two acts and then an hour after Pye Corner Audio had finished to entertain anyone who decided to stick around. 

The ambient hour was fine, we played two tracks each in rotation and gave the room and gathering crowd some warm up music. We were set up on the stage, next to Pye Corner's kit and Shunt Voltage's equipment. A laser show was also set up for added visual entertainment. 

I was at the decks when the Shunt Voltage duo took the stage, just one track into my two. One of Shunt Voltage had to reboot his laptop so I stayed at the decks and then when they were ready to go cued up something so that when Shunt Voltage had finished I could just go back on stage and hit play. 

Shunt Voltage were really good, two men, a bank of synths and laptops, some FX pedals and a microphone which each member used at different times, gnomic repetitive phrases delivered over the crunching electronic sounds. At times it sounded like Mark E. Smith (aptly as The Fall have a song called Cheetham Hill) playing with early 80s Cabaret Voltaire/ late 80s 808 State, full on rhythms and bursts of synth noise and samples and a series of projections behind them that fitted the music perfectly. Manchester music- not the kind that's filled stadiums this summer but the more underground and leftfield electronic/ industrial/ acid techno that's as much part of the city's heritage as the guitars are. 

Resistor

As they completed their set and took their applause I slipped onto the stage behind the decks, waited a few seconds and then hit play. I'd been deliberating about whether to keep the thumpy, electronic energy in the room going, keeping the beats and bpms where Shunt Voltage had left them, or whether I should cool it down. Pye Corner Audio was likely to start with some slow, beatless, ambient stuff I thought but also I reckoned he'd have the audience eating out of the palm of his hand so I decided to keep the uptempo energy going. I hit play and James Holden's Blackpool Late Eighties boomed out. I fiddled with a few knobs, adjusted a few buttons and looked up...

It seemed like at that exact moment every single person in the packed out room was looking at me- instantly DJ imposter syndrome shot through me, 'What am I doing up here? What the fuck do I do next? How did I end up in this situation?' A bit nerve wracking. 

Heads were nodding I noticed and I quickly looked down, deciding to ignore them all and concentrate on cueing up the next track, getting it in exactly the right place to mix from deck A to deck B and pray I didn't mess up the transition. I slid the fader across and Jon Hopkins' remix of Daniel Avery's Glitter boomed into The Yard, tough, slo mo four four techno drums and a growing synth noise intensity. I was a minute or two into when Pye Corner Audio appeared next to me and I wondered if he was a bit pissed off that I'd gone a bit too hard- not that there was much I could do about it at that point, I was committed. He got his kit up and running, I mixed into a third track and then he gave me a smile and nod that he was ready to start. I hit the pause button, the track juddered for a few seconds and then I cut the noise. 

This picture shows what seemed to be two hundred and fifty pairs of eyes scrutinising my every move. It makes me feel a little anxious just looking at it. 

Pye Corner Audio started off with some very ambient synth sounds, quietening the room completely. Some brief interludes of sounds, bubbles and whirrs and then an FXed but recognisable voice came over the PA, Andrew Weatherall talking about smoke and music and coloured lights, acid house as gnostic ceremony. For the next hour Pye Corner was superb, gradually building the set, bringing in rhythms and bass, a larger and entrancing sound. Behind a lot of his tracks and sounds there's a sense of unease, the discomfort and folk horror of 70s public information films mixed with Cold War dread filtered through acid house and rave. The set built- no real gaps between tracks just a seamless segue from to another or the briefest of pauses, the crowd bobbed along, heads nodding, hands waved around, some dancing near the front. It was a superb hour of electronic ambient/ acid house synth music with this track at the heart of it...

Quarry Rave

Pye Corner finished by bringing the FXed and filtered Andrew Weatherall sample back. I'm not sure if he knows about The Flightpath Estate and our connections to Andrew's music but if not it was a lovely connection and coincidence. 

There's something about Pye Corner Audio's music I associate with lockdown. During the 2020- 21 period Martyn Jenkins dropped new tracks onto Bandcamp monthly and the subterranean, dystopic element in his music fitted with those times- but the warmth and communal spirit that is filtered through much of them was equally appropriate, a small community of people isolated from each other physically but listening to the same music via the internet. These things passed through my mind as the projections flashed away and the music filled the Victorian school room. 

After Pye Corner Audio ended his set we played some more tunes, from 10.30 through until 11.15, a hardy crew of dancers hanging around for more fun. It was pissing down outside so staying indoors and listening to our acid/ techno disco was the lesser of two evils. Dan got up and played David Harrow's AanDee, a track from Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 named after Mr Weatherall and Martyn (Pye Corner) asked about a couple of tunes we'd played, later sending a message to Flightpath Martin saying it was really good night and 'felt like a proper rave'. We kept playing, enjoying the freedom and the sound system. We got some good pictures out of it too. Amazing what coloured lights, smoke and music can do. 

Monday's Long Song

Today's long song comes in conjunction with Saturday's Apocalypse Now! post. A photo kept popping up in some of my social media feeds last week, a photo of Sean Flynn (below on the right).

Sean Flynn was the son of Errol Flynn and Lili Damita. Being the son of Errol Flynn, one of Hollywood's most famous stars (not to mention a notorious party animal and womaniser) must have had quite an impact on young Sean. His mother was a dancer, model, singer and actor. Before she met and married Errol she'd been in a relationship with Prince Louis Ferdinand, grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Trying to find your way through all of that as a teenager must have been interesting. Sean grew up and tried acting but got bored of it and in the mid- 60s he decided to become a freelance photojournalist. In 1966 he went to Vietnam. His photos of the war in Vietnam were soon being published in Time Life and Paris Match. Sean became part of a risk taking group of American photojournalists who wanted to take what they saw as the best pictures. This meant going into combat alongside US troops sometimes. 

Sean and friend/ colleague Dana Stone whizzed around South Vietnam on rented Honda motorbikes, wore military fatigues and took high risk jobs, going out on patrol with US soldiers. In March '66 he was wounded in the knee and a month later while out with the Green Berets they were ambushed by the Viet Cong. Sean and the platoon fought their way out of trouble, Flynn using an M16 assault rifle a Green Beret had given him. He later made a parachute jump with the 101st Airborne and helped an Australian platoon who he'd been photographing by identifying a mine and warning them. After spending part of 1967 covering the Arab- Israeli War he was back in Vietnam in 1968, photographing the aftermath of the Tet Offensive. He was struck by grenade fragments in a battle near Da Nang. It's probably fair to say that he blurred the lines around photojournalism and impartiality. I'm not sure Sean saw himself as impartial. He went to Vietnam to photograph American soldiers and he lived with them and among them while there. 

In 1970 Nixon invaded Cambodia as part of his attempts to end the war in Vietnam- some nicely contradictory policies there from President Nixon. Sean and Dana crossed the border into Cambodia on their motorbikes. They encountered a VC roadblock and decided they wanted to interview some VC. According to witnesses (other American journalists at the scene, ones who chose to travel by car rather than motorbike) Sean and Dana went up to the Viet Cong soldiers, were relieved of their motorbikes and then marched into a treeline. They were never seen again and their bodies were never found. The VC and Cambodian communist fighters the Khmer Rouge were responsible for kidnapping and killing several journalists around the time- it seems that Sean Flynn and Dana Stone were two of these. Sean's mother Lili spent a fortune trying to find her son. He was legally declared dead in 1984. She died a decade later. Errol was already gone- he died in 1959. 

Sean Flynn's story was part of Michael Herr's book Dispatches, a six part account of Herr's time in Vietnam in 1967/68. Dispatches is part journalism/ part fiction and was first published in 1977, a key text in the New Journalism. He also contributed to the script for Apocalypse Now! Dispatches and Apocalypse Now! were on The Clash's reading lists and film nights. Joe was fascinated by the Vietnam War, America's failure and the nation's guilt over it. 

The Clash spent months in New York in 1980 and 1981, recording some of the tracks that became Sandinista! in '80 and playing seventeen concerts at Bonds Casino in 1981. They met a Vietnam veteran, Larry McIntyre, who'd had both his legs blown off in Vietnam (as referenced in Combat Rock's Car Jamming). They wrote Charlie Don't Surf about Vietnam and inspired by Apocalypse Now! They wrote Washington Bullets about US foreign policy, the Cold War, Afghanistan and US actions in Cuba, Chile and Nicaragua. Straight To Hell included a verse about a child in Vietnam, fathered by an American soldier and refused permission to join him in the USA, left behind in post- war Vietnam. Joe found plenty of subject matter in Vietnam and in 1981 back in London, wrote a song inspired by Sean Flynn. 

Sean Flynn (Extended 'Marcus Music' Version)

The original version is over seven minutes long (cut down by producer Glyn Johns to four minutes for Combat Rock). In fact Sean Flynn may have been the song that tipped Bernie Rhodes over the edge when he complained 'does everything have to be a raga?!'. Strummer then used this too for the opening line to Rock The Casbah ('Now the king he told the boogie men/ You have to let that raga drop').

Musically and tonally, Sean Flynn (like Death Is A Star, also on Combat Rock) is a million miles from Career Opportunities and 1976, a song that shows how far the band traveled in just five years. Mick's guitar is covered in echo and FX, multiple guitars overdubbed over Topper's South Asian inspired drums and percussion. Gary Barnacle's saxophone wails away in the background, soundtracking Joe's existential ruminations. He sings some way off in the distance, low in the mix.... 

'You know he heard the drums of war

When the past was a closing door

The drums beat into the jungle floor

The past was always a closing door

Rain on the leaves and the soldiers sing

You never never hear anything

They filled the sky with a tropical storm

You know he heard the drums of war

Each man knows what he's searching for'

The full length version, the Marcus Music version (so- called as it was recorded at Marcus Music studios in April 1981), is an extraordinary Clash song, a real lost gem. It's atmospheric and experimental, Strummer writing an imagined poetic version of Flynn and his life and disappearance in South East Asia and Mick, Topper and Gary creating an inspired abstract, cinematic track. 

In Mick's version of Combat Rock, a double album with several songs running at over seven or eight minutes plus five songs that either became B- sides or were not released, and titled Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg, Sean Flynn is a centrepiece of the album, closing side two after Should I Stay Or Should I Go and the extended mix of Ghetto Defendant, The Clash pushing outwards and onwards. In the real world, the struggles over Combat Rock coupled with Topper's increasing drug issues and tensions between Joe, Bernie and Paul on one side and Mick on the other led to the band's demise. Maybe, as Joe once remarked, they should all have taken a holiday. 

Thirty Minutes Of Ambient Guitar Music

I'm not sure what it says about where my head is at right now but I'm being drawn back once again to the sounds of Vini Reilly's guitar and with that to the idea that guitars can make ambient music. A couple of albums have come my way in the last year that slot right into this- Kevin McCormick's Passing Clouds and Thought Leadership's Ill Of Pentacles. It may be no coincidence that both of the guitarists behind these albums are from the Manchester area (Kevin is now residing in Mobberley, a village not far south of Manchester and whoever Thought Leadership is lives in Edgeley, Stockport). Vini Reilly's guitar and echo and chorus pedals have been making their hard to pin down but spellbinding sounds since the late 70s when he was placed into a room with Martin Hannett and they came up with The Return Of the Durutti Column. I first heard Durutti Column's music in 1987 and it's been close to my stereo ever since. Vini has retired, his health poor since having three strokes back in the late 00s but his legacy as one of Factory Records' true geniuses is secure. 

This mix pulls together some Durutti Column songs ('silly little tunes', according to Vini) along with Kevin McCormick and Thought Leadership and the former Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie who has been releasing ambient guitar tracks onto his Bandcamp page for some time. A chilled and slightly melancholic autumnal ambient guitar mix for late September 2025. 

The world is a shitshow and a bin fire. Trump and Netanyahu lie and deceive from the stage at the United Nations. Farage lies about immigrants. Starmer follows Farage down a path that can only be a dead end. Racists hoist flags from lampposts and paint roundabouts. Life seems to get a little bit worse every day. But we still have music- and we will have it long after Trump, Netanyahu, Farage and all the rest of them have shuffled off the stage and disappeared. 

Thirty Minutes Of Ambient Guitar Music

• Durutti Column: Sketch For A Manchester Summer 1989
• Robin Guthrie: Mountain
• Kevin McCormick: It's Been A Long Time
• Kevin McCormick: Alone In A Crowd
• Thought Leadership: III
• Durutti Column: A Room In Southport
• Durutti Column: Royal Infirmary
• Michael Hix: Pure Land

Sketch For A Manchester Summer starts with the rain falling, taped from the door of Vini's West Didsbury home thirty six years ago. It rains quite a lot in Manchester- you might have heard. The synth that bubbles away with the rain is joined by Vini's guitar and for a couple of minutes a rainy Mancunian summer is the only place to be. The song is tucked away on an album of rarities, sessions and unreleased recordings, The Sporadic Recordings- some of them were done at Sporadic Studios, Manchester. CD only, now fairly rare. 

Robin Guthrie's guitar lit up Cocteau Twins and for the last few years he's released all sorts of music onto his Bandcamp page, including lots of ambient guitar pieces. Montain was recorded in Brittany, France in 2022, a track Robin refers to as an 'orphaned track', one which didn't find a place at the time. Released on Bandcamp a year ago, September 2024.

Kevin McCormick made several albums of guitar music in Manchester in the late 70s and early 80s. His work was lost for decades and then rediscovered and re- issued in 2021 on the Smiling C label. In 2024 Kevin released a new album, Passing Clouds, one I can't recommend enough. It's Been A Long Time is from it. Alone In A Crowd is from an album recorded with David Horridge, Sticklebacks, polished at Stockport's Strawberry Studios after initial recordings on Kevin's  four track home studio. 

Thought Leadership's Ill Of Pentacles came out on cassette and digital in 2024 and then on vinyl via Be With this year (all gone, I missed out too). It's a wonderful album, recorded at home in Edgeley, Stockport and other than that there's very little information. It was recorded in January 2024 with guitar, pedals and drum machine and the tracks are numbered I to X. 

Snowflake is from Short Stories For Pauline, a lost Durutti Column album recorded in November 1983 that could/ should have been Vini's fourth on Factory. A Tony Wilson A&R oversight saw it shelved in favour of Without Mercy (the song Duet from Short Stories was expanded into Without Mercy). Tony got it wrong- Short Stories is a Durutti Column masterpiece that finally saw the light of day on Factory Benelux in 2012. Worth the wait. 

Royal Infirmary is from 1986's Circuses And Bread, Vini and drummer/ manager/ friend Bruce Mitchell joined by John Metcalfe on viola and Tim Kellett on trumpet. The piano/ guitar interplay on Royal Infirmary is next level Durutti Column beauty. 

Michael Hix released an album as Wonderful Aspiration Of The Source, a guitar only ambient/ cosmic instrumental ten track album that came out two weeks ago. Hix is one of the founders of Nashville Ambient Ensemble. Find it here. 

Soundtrack Saturday

I first saw Apocalypse Now! in the late night BBC2 slot at some point in the 80s. It came out in 1979 and in a few years became a record collection soundtrack staple- the blood red cover with the Vietnamese sun fading into an orange/ red haze, the scrawl of the film's title and then the disc inside, The Doors, The Ride Of The Valkyries....

It's still an astonishing film, Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece maybe- even the story of its making is an epic filled with disaster. Martin Sheen's opening scene and narration, 'Saigon... shit, I'm still in Saigon', the ever present whir of fans and helicopter blades, and the increasing madness of the trip upriver to find Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a US officer who has gone rogue. The scene with the Playmates choppered in to entertain US troops, dancing to Suzie Q by Flash Cadillac, Cynthia Wood packing pistols- everything, all the time, on the brink of chaos. 

The soundtrack is absolutely key to the film, as much part of the movie as Martin Sheen, Robert Duval, Dennis Hopper, the surfing, the napalm and the horror. Coppola's use of The End by The Doors is inspired. The Doors 80s revival started via Apocalypse Now! and Danny Sugarman's book No One Here Gets Out Alive (publsuhed a year after the film, 1980), and their albums and influence grew through the decade all the way to Oliver Stone's misguided biopic ten years later. The End is Doors max, their closing song in concert and on their debut album, a song that began lyrically when Jim Morrison broke up with his girlfriend Mary Werbelow but became something much darker, more Oedipal. It suited Coppola's vision of the film perfectly, explosions and the sky on fire, the end.... The version from the soundtrack opens with slow motion helicopter blades and then Robbie Krieger's eastern sounding guitar...

The End (Apocalype Now! Edit)

Most of the score for the film was recorded by Carmine Coppola with Francis along with a host of percussionists, synth/ keys players and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, twelve short pieces of music, thirty minutes long when sequenced together, that play a huge part in the film.

Apocalypse Now! OST

The Clash were paying attention, In 1980 they released their own epic, the six sides of vinyl of Sandinista! (an opinion splitting album- I love it, it's the very essence of the band for me). Mick's keyboard slashes and the slowed down helicopter blades that lead the song in are total Apocalypse Now! and the vocal refrain and song title is taken from Colonel Kilgore's famous line about the VC. 

Charlie Don't Surf

Danny Thompson

Danny Thompson's death at the age of 88 was announced on Wednesday, a giant in the background of the English music scene from the early 60s onwards. An obituary I read somewhere yesterday said, musicians didn't get Danny Thompson to play bass on their records because they wanted some one who could follow the guitarist and hold down the root note- they got him in because they wanted Danny Thompson. His stand up double bass, born out of school music lessons where he picked up trumpet and guitar before settling on double bass, was as much a lead instrument as any other sound on the many records he played on. He played blues with Alexis Korner and then folk/ jazz with Pentangle and then on albums by Nick Drake, Richard Thompson, Davey Graham, The Incredible String Band, Bert Jansch and John Martyn and then albums by a slew of artists including Talk Talk, Everything But The Girl, Kate Bush, Alison Moyet and David Sylvian. 

Until I started looking at the list of records his bass playing adorns, I hadn't fully realised how many I own with his playing on them and his name on the sleeve. Danny's playing was melodic and inventive, basslines that told their own story, that worked for the song but very much existed in their own right too. Sympathetic but full of the man's character. 

Pentangle rewrote the folk rule book in the late 60s, updating folk music by fusing it with jazz and a modern sensibility. This of course outraged the purists. In this clip Pentangle play live in January 1971 doing Light Flight , a song I've been playing on and off for several years since Andy Bell covered it. 

In 1969 Danny played bass on Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left, an album I love (not least 'Cello Song which has taken on a whole new meaning for me since Isaac's death- I've written about it, before more than once, and probably will again). Time Has Told Me is the album's opening song and Danny's also there on River Man, Three Hours, 'Cello Song, Man In A Shed and Saturday Sun, his bass bubbling away behind Nick's guitar and voice and Joe Boyd's production. 

Time Has Told Me

Danny's connection with John Martyn was long and went beyond music. They were notorious drinking buddies and trouble causers. In 1973 he played on John Martyn's the fourth album Solid Air, a groundbreaking blend of folk, jazz, Echoplex guitar, blues space rock and after hours music. The title track was itself a tribute by Martyn to Nick Drake, John's guitar and Danny's bass dancing together and wrapping themselves around each other...

Solid Air

There's loads more I could post, potentially hundreds and hundreds of songs, all to some degree improved by Danny Thompson's bass playing, but these three will do for now. RIP Danny Thompson. 

The Ban Ban Ton Ton Connection

Over at Ban Ban Ton Ton, Dr Rob invited me to review some new releases. This pair of releases have become part of my September listening, both highly recommended. There's daily posts at Ban ban Ton Ton by Dr. Rob and a cast of contributors, music and words that are always worth checking in on. 

Manchester trio Sonnenspot came together after times spent playing in various Mancunian related line ups and records- Alfie, Badly Drawn Boy's Hour Of The Bewilder Beast album, Jane Weaver's band and Mother Sky all feature as do the current Rainy Heart team who are doing some really good events around the city. Sonnenspot's debut album is out on Jason Boardman's Before I Die and so is automatically of interest and is in part a tribute to the sounds of Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger, Kraftwerk, Manuel Gottsching and other 70s cosmicshe bands as well as some 90s influences. 

My review is here and the album can be listened to at Bandcamp here. This is an edited, shorter version of the song at the album's core, Motorway.

Before that I took on the latest EP by Warmduscher, a song that didn't make their last album (2024's Too Cold To Hold) because it didn't fit and needed a release of its own- Yakuza. Warmduscher formed to play at a house party in 2014 and have close connections with some other top class London post- punk/ electronic punk/ sleaze- techno bands including Fat White Family, Paranoid London and Decius.

Yakuza is a Spaghetti Western theme crossed with Tom Waits and Big Audio Dynamite, a rollercoaster ride, a blur of action on the big screen. There are two remixes on the EP, one by Sworn Virgins and the other by David Holmes. Holmes doesn't hold back with his remix, turning everything up as far as it will go. My review is here. 

 

You Better Be Ready

The recent Sabres Of Paradise interview where Jagz Kooner selected eight tracks/ records that soundtracked the trio's studio listening while they made Sabresonic included Cypress Hill's 1993 album Black Sunday. Cypress Hill hit the jackpot with the sound, image and frequent homages to smoking weed. They were massive- the first hip hop act to have two US top ten albums. 

The two rappers, B- Real and Sen Dog, perfected their whiny, nasal delivery. DJ Muggs' production was incredibly good, the next step on in hip hop at the time, a fusion of deep bass, head nodding beats and deftly selected and deployed samples and scratching. Black Friday included this pair of tracks...

When The Shit Goes Down

Funky as you like, built over a lolloping groove and with some superb guitar licks dropped in and out (Billy Cobham's Stratus is in there as is Deep Gully by The Outlaw Blues Band). Sen and B- Real trade verses about being prepared for all eventualities.  

Hits From The Bong

Hits From The Bong opens with the sound of bubbles and inhalation followed by the guitar part from Dusty Springfield's Son Of A Preacher Man. Muggs throws Lee Dorsey's Get Out Of My Life Woman into the mix. Mary Jane is celebrated. 

That Sabres Of Paradise were listening to Black Sunday isn't too much of a surprise- they had a hip hop element in their sound and Andrew Weatherall played hip hop sets in the mid- 90s. DJ Muggs' production would no doubt have been dissected and studied. The clarity and space Muggs gets in his tracks is definitely evident in the Sabres sound from around this time. Jagz says they were 'completely obsessed' with Black Sunday. There's absolutely some of Cypress Hill in this...

Theme

Accelerated Life

The internet was abuzz yesterday with news that the rapture is due today. Not the New York punk- funk band (although they are reforming and re- appearing later on this year so their timing is both good but also bad depending on how things turn out) but the actual End Of Days when Jesus Christ re- appears and all good Christians alive and dead will ascend to heaven. The rest of us are done for at that point I think. If by any chance this does come true as foretold by a South African preacher then the post I've scheduled for Wednesday may be horrifically out of date but that's a chance at the moment I'm going to have to take. 

In the meantime, rapture notwithstanding, here's some outstanding new music from David Harrow. David cut his teeth in the early 80s with Anne Clark and then as part of the On U Sound studio and live band team. In the 1990s he recorded as Blood Sugar with Andrew Weatherall and the pair also recorded the fantastic dubbed out, chilled out beauty of Message To Crommie for the first War Child album. Andrew and David called themselves the Planet 4 Folk Quartet, a name they used just once.

I met Crommie a couple of summers ago, a real person living not far from me, at an event in Chorlton. He's a sound engineer/ live sound expert who's worked on sound rigs in Manchester since the late 80s, with a slew of bands including 808 State and The reformed Stone Roses. Andrew regarded him as the best in the business and when he and David Harrow were recording their track (all the tracks for War Child were recorded in one day) they were looking for a title for the song- at the same time Andrew asked for a message to be got to Manchester's sound engineer par excellence... 

Message To Crommie

Since the mid- 90s David Harrow has moved to LA and recorded under his name and as James Hardway. In the last few years he has been a Californian cottage industry, recording and releasing dozens of tracks and EPs. The latest has just come out on Exeter's Mighty Force label, a four track EP called Accelerated Life. David's music takes in modular synth ambient explorations, dub, acid, techno and almost every point in between. 

On Accelerated Life the sound is electronic, a deep house/ techno/ bleep/ braindance melting pot. The first track on the EP is a co- write with singer Sandy Mill, Catch Me, a track that pushes out of the speakers straight away and keeps bouncing, Sandy's voice cruising on top of the drums and synths. Macro keeps the bpms and kick drum active, a deep sea bassline bubbling away and piano/ synth stabs and a sense of perpetual momentum. Meso's jackhammer kick drum is matched by a speaker rattling synth bassline and more bleepy topline fun. Finally there is Supra, another four four drum machine rhythm, lovely warm bass tones and synths, a hi- hat and a cricket chirruping in time. All in all, more superb stuff from Mr Harrow and Mighty Force. Accelerated Life can be found here. 

Keith And Sonny

In July Keith McIvor (JD Twitch) announced that he had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour and an appeal was started to raise money for his care. On Friday news of Keith's death came out via his DJ partner Jonnie Wilkes. Keith was just 57. He grew up in Edinburgh but moved to Glasgow in 1986 to go to university and became part of the city's dance music underground- at the legendary Pure and then with Wilkes as Optimo with a freewheeling musical policy that took in acid house and electronic dance music, post- punk, electroclash, punk and whatever they fancied playing. The pair continued to DJ as Optimo (named after Liquid Liquid's classic track). Keith as Twitch was also a producer and remixer. I have a load of Optimo productions, remixes and DJ sets. This one of Cold Cave from 2010 is always somewhere near the top of their pile...

Life Magazine (An Optimo Espacio Flexi Pop Mix)

The previous year they were one of the remix teams who took tracks from Journal For Plague Lovers, the Manics album from that year, into new places...

Journal For Plague Lovers (Optimo Espacio Remix)

In 2021 a JD Twitch DJ set was released on tape and then in 2023 onto Bandcamp (free/ pay what you want), two forty five minute sets to raise money for the Glasgow North West food bank. Let There Be Drums is a masterclass in track selection and sequencing, all manner of human and machine operated rums and percussion, hand drums, tribal freak outs, early 90s UK hardcore breakbeats and meditative German forest music. Find it here. 

The outpouring of tributes on social media since Friday by Keith's friends and the wider music/ DJ community is testament to the man and how much he was loved. 

RIP Keith. 

Sonny Curtis died on Friday too, aged 88. Sonny was a member of The Crickets and wrote I Fought The Law, as performed and recorded by The Bobby Fuller Four. Imagine a world without I Fought The Law in it. 

I Fought The Law

In 1979 The Clash released their Cost Of Living EP with their cover of the song as the lead track, an incendiary and career defining song for The Clash, a band with three front men all bellowing the song's title and refrain into their mics...

I Fought The Law (Live At The Lyceum)

On The Cost Of Living EP the song took pole position and was followed by two Clash deep cuts, Groovy Times and The Gates Of the West and the re- recorded version of Capital Radio. The EP then had a brief reprisal of the Sonny Curtis song with Mikey Dread's vocal advertising the EP. Not that this jingle was ever going to be played on the radio (as the band noted in the previous song).

I Fought The Law (Reprise)

RIP Sonny Curtis. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Autumn Songs

Some songs with the word Autumn in the title for a Sunday mix in late September, a day ahead of the autumn equinox- tomorrow, Monday 22nd September at 7.22 pm, a day which marks the end of astronomical summer and the onset of astronomical autumn. Buckle up. Winter's coming. 

Autumn definitely seems to bring out the melancholy and downbeat in songwriters- the songs on my hard drive in the mix below are firmly in that camp- it's OK to wallow in that sometimes and I think by the time we get to the end there's some catharsis.

Forty Five Minutes Of Autumn

• The Small Faces: The Autumn Stone
• Lee Hazlewood: My Autumn's Done Come
• Jaymay: Autumn Fallin'
• Pacific: Autumn Island
• Yo La Tengo: Autumn Sweater
• Higamos Hogamos: Harold/ Autumn Equinox Sunset
• The Prisners Dream: Autumn Days
• East Village: Black Autumn
• Marcel Slettern: Autumn
• Brian Eno: Dunwich Beach, Autumn 1960
• Coldcut : Autumn Leaves (The Irresistible Force Remix)

The Small Faces song The Autumn Stone is from their later period when they'd shed their initial skin and become a little more hippy, a little more reflective, they sound a bit... earthier and woodier. Written by Steve Marriot and recorded in September 1968, The Autumn Stone is a ballad with a beautiful slow glow. The Small Faces were such a great band weren't they.

Lee Hazlewood's autumn isn't just seasonal, it's a lifetime thing sung by a man who seemed to be permanently found in the autumn of his life. This song was the flip side to Sand, a 1966 7" single. 

Jaymay is an American singer/ songwriter, an indie/ folk artist, whose song You Better Run was a music blog song back in the early 2010s golden days of music blogging. Her 2007 album of the same name, Autumn Fallin' is a lovely pun for those on the US side of the Atlantic. 

Pacific were on minor Creation records band in 1990. Their song Jetstream was a favourite with me and a friend who went into a flat share in 1992, a song that sampled the sinking of the Belgrano. Autumn Island was on their 1990 album Inference which is probably Creation's least heard album, undeservedly so but in 1990 Creation had many other irons in the fire and some bands just fell through the cracks. 

Yo La Tengo's Autumn Sweater is one of my favourite songs by anyone, ever. Everything about it- the words, the singing, the drumming, the tone, the feel, the longing to be gone, to be moving on... it's all just perfect. 'We could slip away/ Wouldn't that be better/Me with nothing to say/ And you in your autumn sweater'. 

Higamos Hogamos are/ were Hackney based Steve Webster and various assistants and collaborators. I first heard them when Andrew Weatherall played some krauty/ cosmische tracks by them on a radio show in the dim and distant past- I think I followed up by going to the Higamos Hogamos MySpace page (which dates it). The track on this mix comes in two parts, the first half a lovely experimental instrumental and the second a field recording of the autumn equinox at sunset. 

The Prisners Dream (sic) were one of those American garage rock bands who made the grand total of one sole 7" single, released on Rene Records in 1967. They came from Canonsberg, Pennsylvania. Autumn Days is a gorgeously melancholic folk rock song, backed with You're The One I Really Love. Autumn Days was on a double album compilation from a couple of years ago called Ghost Riders, seventeen songs for a North American road trip with sleeve notes by Sonic Boom. I reviewed it at Ban Ban Ton Ton in 2022 and it's a record I still recommend highly. The Prisners were all between 17 and 19 years old when they recorded the song and sound utterly bereft, a state of being before they've even reached adulthood. 

East Village were on Heavenly, caught out in that short period between late 80s indie and early 90s indie- dance. Their album Drop Out has been re- issued several times, on each occasion to rave reviews. They made little in the way of waves at the time but every time Drop Out comes out again they attract a few new followers. 

Marcel Slettern is from Athens, Georgia,an electronic producer, writer and visual artist who goes for the single word title here- autumn, a few minutes of piano playing. I have no idea why or how this song ended up on my hard drive or where it came from but I'm glad it did. 

Brian Eno's Dunwich Beach, Autumn, 1960 is from his 1982 album On Land, a landmark ambient album. Dunwich was a Suffolk port that feel into the sea due to coastal erosion. It's one of those Eno ambient tracks which is absolutely beyond compare. 

Coldcut's cover of the jazz standard Autumn Leaves has been released in various versions and at various times. None of the versions quite matches The Irresistible Force's remix, a Balearic masterpiece and one which provides an ending that takes us to a better place. 

Soundtrack Saturday

Robert Redford died earlier this week at the age of 89, leaving a long and glittering life and career. One of the film of his most closely connected with its soundtrack is 1969's Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, a film I never tire of. It's a classic buddy movie/ Western, Redford and Paul Newman, two Hollywood superstars playing the titular train robbers, who flee to Bolivia to avoid the U.S. Rangers, taking Katherine Ross with them. The film ends with a shoot out, Butch and Sundance holed up and wounded and surrounded by the Bolivian army. They discuss their next move and Cassidy suggests they should go to  Australia. Then they charge out of the building, guns blazing into a freeze frame...

The song Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head, written by Hal David and Burt Bacharach, sung by B.J. Thomas and with Carole King on bass, was written for the film. Not everyone, Robert Redford included, thought it as the correct choice. It didn't fit with the film, there was no rain, Redford said it 'seemed like a dumb idea'. It was massive, sold over two million copies and won an Oscar. 

Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head

R.I.P. Robert Redford. 

Some Folks

While I was on holiday in Italy in early August I received a message via one of my social media apps. It read, 'We see that you are on vacation. When you return would you like to review an album that is not available anywhere and has not been released?' It was from Ephraim Washington who has an Instagram profile titled Last Of the Ancients with a black and white profile photo of what appears to be a man with a heavy white beard, dressed in clothes that a 19th century homesteader might have worn, large belt buckle proudly halfway up his stomach. I was intrigued and replied 'Yes' and when I got home an album, also titled Last Of The Ancients, was in my inbox. 

Then, as per often happens with new music in my downloads folder, I forgot about it. Last week while scrolling it caught my eye and I clicked play on the first few songs. It might be partly the changing seasons, summer long gone round and autumn already moving in but the songs chimed directly with me-dusty songs, seemingly from a time gone, songs that could have come from the 1890s (or the 1990s for that matter)- acoustic guitars and banjo, drums that sound like they're being played in another room, down the hall, with the doors left open in between the two rooms, a folk/ Americana feel, a singer recorded close to the mic, choral backing vocals that fill a space in the near distance, a little away from the microphone, songs about Sunday morning, cracks in the sky, the early hours of the morning, storms and uninvited fools. There's something of Greil Marcus' 'old weird America' about the eight songs on Last Of The Ancients- I can hear some Deserter's Songs in there as well, some Giant Sand and some Will Oldham too.

The Last Of The Ancients crackles into life with Sunday Morning Scene, muffled drums and twangy banjo and rather lovely singing voice (whether the singer is Ephraim Washington or the band is, I don't know). This is the second song, Some Folks, Ephraim opening up with, 'Some folks don't like me at all', as the banjo and choir move in circles behind him. A fiddle joins in and Ephraim draws some conclusions about thinking once and thinking twice. 

Some Folks

On She's Not Alone there's more plucked banjo, a lot of echo and a ghostly swirl and then in the second half of the song it all snaps into focus, swelling and becoming really quite moving. Miles Of Blue shuffles in with a ton of echo and the sound of instruments playing in a room with timber walls. The album ends with The Storm, the sound of the wind howling and a bent guitar string, a song pitched somewhere between a long dark night of the soul and the first rays of morning. 

 

Breadcrumb Trail

In 1991 US band Slint released Spiderland, their second/ last album. The band had come together in Louisville, Kentucky in 1986 when two local punk bands folded (Squirrel Bait and Maurice). Slint's line up- Brian McMahon, David Pajo, Todd Brashear and Britt Walford- spent four days in August 1990 recording Spiderland, an album that got little press and coverage on release in the US but was picked up by the inkies in the UK and gradually grew to become one of the 90s rock's cult albums, an influence on the entire post- rock/ indie and alt- rock scenes. 

The sessions were intense, members of the  took things very seriously (as the US punk/ hardcore/ indie scene kind of demanded at the turn of the 90s- this was not done for laughs or as disposable pop music). Slint's quiet- loud dynamics, tempo shifts, unusual song structures and angular rhythms set the course for a lot of what would follow. Brian McMahon's spoken word vocals would explode into shouting and the lyrics were odd- strange narrative accounts, syntax all over the place, off kilter. Spiderland is clearly not Nevermind. It was never going to cross over and blow up like Nirvana did but in its own way it was just as influential.

The album opens with Breadcrumb Trail...

Breadcrumb Trail

David Pajo's guitar possibly recalling Tom Verlaine, stutters and repeats a riff, the drums rumble, there's a lot of space evident- you can almost hear the room they are recording in- and McMahon talks about the day the carnival came into town. Pajo repeatedly changes course completely, the song's structure changing instantly, switching to distorted riffs. McMahon's singing becomes pained and distant. The  they switch again, the bass and d rums following and becoming more of a presence. It's exhilarating and intense, a bit uncomfortable, not a song that could become background music or a prime time radio standard. 

The second song is Nosferatu Rock (which I really should have posted last Saturday in the Saturday Soundtrack slot). The song is inspired by  F.W. Murnau's the 1922 film, German Expressionist vampire horror. 

Nosferatu Rock

Snares and tom toms, more sharp and angular guitar playing with an intermittent electric guitar squeal that is impossible to ignore and an explosive chorus, all jagged riff slashing and cymbal smashes. 'I could just settle down, I'd be doing just fine', McMahon mutters at one point before the chorus bursts into earshot again. Eventually they settle into a grinding, crunching groove, riffs and drums in sync, before everything dissolves and burns up into thirty seconds of feedback. The remaining four songs are all equally powerful concluding with the epic end song Good Morning Captain, the bleak seven minute closing shot. McMahon made himself sick from straining to sing/ speak/ shout over the guitars. They split up before Spiderland was even released, the toll too much (but did reform in 2005 and played together for two years). 

Mogwai, Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Tortoise, Explosions In The Sky, Pavement.... all these bands (and more) must have been listening to Spiderland, all took something from it. It is frequently held up as one of those albums that was hardly picked up at the time but which as gone on to have a second and third life. 

Wonderful Aspiration Of The Source

Michael Hix is a founding member of the Nashville Ambient Ensemble, an ambient Americana collective whose 2021 album Cerulean was one I discovered in the spring of that year along with Luke Schneider's pedal steel ambient drone lp Altar Of Harmony. In some ways I always associate them with lockdown and also with Isaac's death. The combination of traditional instruments and synths, ambient drones and plucked strings, was more or less the only music that made sense to me for a while in the period after he died, the weeks and months in late 2021/ early 2022. Elegy (appropriately enough) is from Cerulean. 

Elegy

Michael Hix is about to release a solo album titled Wonderful Aspiration Of The Source, ten instrumentals for electric guitar partly inspired by his Buddhist meditation and partly by a need to simplify (part of the same thing I imagine). There are two tracks currently at Bandcamp, Cadence and Deer Park, both played entirely using electric guitar, no synths or pedal steel, just a Telecaster and some live looping set ups. Both conjure Vini Reilly gone to Nashville to some extent for me- minimal and emotive guitar playing, crossing the blurry lines between ambient Americana and cosmic country. 

Some Things'll Never Change

Two weeks ago reader and internet friend Spencer sent me a message abut a track with some enthusiastic words. In the past Spencer has been the starting point of several posts and for a while as eries of songs/ tracks he sent me became a series. The one he sent two weeks ago was more than enough to prompt a guest post. Here it is...

One of the 'Old School Balearic Classics': Originally released in 1986, it became a regular final tune of the night on the White Isle...

The Way It Is

In 1990, the piano instrumental part of the song used to run on a loop while Bob Wilson reflected on how the scores of the day had impacted the League Tables towards the end of the Grandstand Saturday afternoon programme. Men and boys hung around electrical shop windows while their wives/mothers wondered where they'd got to...

More recently - in July 2024, in fact - it got a Balearic update courtesy of those cheeky Psychemagik chaps, who produced a dubbed out calypso instrumental version... https://psychemagik.bandcamp.com/track/the-way-it-is For me, there's no topping the original extended mix. The tune itself manages to combine melancholy, joy and nostalgia in a gloriously simple roller of a tune that just keeps going and you never want to end!

Psychemagik's edit was new to me and I love it too- a gloriously chilled end of night version with steel can drums carrying the melody. Maybe there will be more from Spencer on an ad hoc basis.

The Way It Is is as ever lyrically topical, Bruce Hornsby's song about the civil rights struggle by African Americans in the 1960s. The third verse goes like this...

'Well, they passed a law in '64
To give those who ain't got a little more
But it only goes so far
'Cause the law don't change another's mind
When all it sees at the hiring time
Is the line on the color bar, no, no'

The USA and the UK are both facing a massive right wing backlash at the moment with racial issues front and centre. No matter what the so- called 'patriots' say about the reasons for hanging flags and painting roundabouts it seems pretty clear to me that it's actually about defining Englishness and Britishness as white and that it's also designed to intimidate those people who aren't white, to make them question whether they belong. The march in London on Saturday was the 2020s successor to those by the National Front and BNP in the 70s and 80s, racism dressed up as patriotism. Patriotism is always a dangerous game to play, flags are always a dangerous piece of cloth to hide behind. They almost always lead to nationalism- and English nationalism is always racist. These things have ebbed  and flowed over the last half century and previously. Bruce Hornsby's line, 'That's just the way it is/ Some things'll never change', is maybe not enough right now. 

Monday's Long Song

Sabres Of Paradise have re- issued the pair of albums they originally released in the mid 90s (Sabresonic in 1993 and Haunted Dancehall in 1994). They played a handful of gigs in the summer (Fabric in May, Sydney Opera House a few days and half a world away and then two festival appearances- Primavera and Dekmantel) and have rrecently announced a UK tour for late November with gigs in Bristol, Salford, Sheffield, Leeds, Brighton and London. 

The two remaining members of Sabres, Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns, have done several interviews to accompany all this Sabres activity, three decades on from the last time they played live and released records. This interview at Ransom Note is a short one but very illuminating- Jagz lists and explains eight records that him, Gary and Andrew Weatherall were listening to when they made Sabresonic, the tracks that fed into the sound they were creating back in 1993. Andrew was DJing nationwide at the time and doing his monthly Sabresonic club night in Crucifix Lane, London Bridge station. The eight tracks include some earsplitting, seminal mid- 90s techno, the huge dub techno masterpiece that is Killing Joke's Requiem (A Floating Leaf Always Reaches The Sea Mix),  a legendary Plastikman drum machine massacre, Dub Syndicate and Colourbox, the hip hop production/ rap skills of Cypress Hill and Beastie Boys and this fifteen minute ambient epic...

Ob- Selon Mi- Nos (Repainted by Global Communication)

Mystic Institute was a one man outfit, Cornwall's Paul Kent. He pitched up in Mark Pritchard's studio and wrote and recorded two tracks. Global Communications' Tom Middleton was invited round and built an entirely new track around a third Pritchard track that took on a life of its own. Time stops, space expands, the clock hands tick and tock, synths play everlasting melody lines, the heavenly choir's voices drift in and out... 'pure blissed out distortion' as Jagz describes it. 

Twenty One Minutes Of Two Minute Tracks

I had an idea that I would do a Sunday mix of all those short electronic/ ambient tracks that appear on albums, the intros and outros, the bridging tracks, found sounds, brief ambient pieces and short one minute ideas that never got worked up into a full track but that the artist clearly liked. I realised that to make it forty minutes long would require at least twenty tracks and time constraints this week meant that I started the mix but haven't got anywhere near forty minutes- it's just shy of twenty one minutes, fourteen tracks from a variety of sources. I need to give it more thought really and gather together some more and either do a part two or expand this one out but in the meantime, here it is...

Twenty One Minutes Of Two Minute Tracks

I decided early on that two minutes was the cut off (although there are a couple here which just tip over that time). I was going to go totally beatless but that didn't work out. It's almost completely without vocals too. I wasn't sure it all worked but playing it back last night I was pretty happy with it. An expanded edition/ part two is definitely on the cards. 

• A Man Called Adam: Easter Song (Gospel Oak FX)
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Tiny Reminder No. 1
• Four Tet: This Is For You
• Sewell And The Gong: MYND
• The Orb: Snowbow
• Ultramarine: A Year From Monday
• A Man Called Adam: Easter Song (Hi- Tech)
• M- Paths: Calm
• Polypores: Mystery Energy Score
• Aphex Twin: Avril 14th (reversed music not audio)
• Pandit Pam Pam: Interludio
• Daniel Avery: First Light
• Sydney Minsky Sargeant: Intro
• Andrew Weatherall: Intro

A Man Called Adam's Easter Song is one of their best, a triumphant piece of optimsitc, life affirming Balearica. In 2017 the duo put out a special edition on Bandcamp to celebrate the song's 20th birthday which came with two new very short versions, the found sound intro of Gospel Oak FX and the ambient with beats of Hi- Tech. Both appear on this mix. 

In 2000 Two Lone Swordsmen released their electronic triple disc opus Tiny Reminders, Weatherall and Tenniswood's pursuit of  techno/ bass purism followed through to its end. Each of the three disc opened with a burst of static/ quiet noise called Tiny Reminder and numbered 1, 2 and 3. 

Four Tet's Sixteen Ocean's was a 2020 highlight, three sides of vinyl that soundtracked those early days of lockdown in March/ April 2020 of that year. This Is For You is one of five short tracks on it- the others are Hi Hello, ISTM, 1993 Band Practice and Bubbles At Overlook 25th March 2019- any/ all of which I was going to include here and didn't.

Sewell And The Gong's Patron Saint Of Elswhere is one of my favourite albums of 2025, a Balearic  folk/ motorik beauty with MYND a short one minute fourteen seconds of sound sandwiched between much longer excursions. 

The Orb tend to do long tracks. Snowbow is from 2005's Okie Dokie It's The Orb On Kompakt, an album I only found recently and have been enjoying. Snowbow is the closing track, two minutes and fourteen seconds.

A Year From Monday gave me the idea for this mix. It's on an album of Ultramarine recordings from 1997/ 8 that sat unreleased until this year. I posted it a few Monday's ago and listening to it in the car I wondered how it would work with a load of other very short tracks around it. 

M- Paths' Calm was on their album Hope, released on Mighty Force in 2023, a rippling melody line and drums. 

Polypores released an album in June, Cosmically A Shambles. I posted a song from it on Friday. The slightly hyperactive and bleepy Mystery Energy Score is in the middle of the album and this mix. I couldn't decide if its energy was a good change of pace or not and nearly took it out. In the end I thought it just about worked.

Aphex Twin's Avril 14th is his most streamed track, a Satie like piano piece smothered in reverb. THis version, the music reversed not audio version, is from user18081971's Soundcloud page, widely acknowledged to be Richard D James' outlet for all manner of unreleased music. 

Pandit Pam Pam is from Sao Paulo, Brazil. Interludio is from Dot, an EP from January this year, six tracks recorded while caring for a young baby, Diogo. 

First Light is the opening track on Daniel Avery's Song For Alpha, a 2018 album that was the start of a run of outstanding albums that isn't over yet. One minute and forty seconds of wodnerful ambient drones. 

Sydney Minsky Sargeant's album Lunga came out last week, an autumn 2025 highlight. Intro is the opening track (obviously), a short ambient piece that eases us into Lunga. And out of this mix.

Andrew Weatherall's Intro was the very short first track on Convenanza. 'I seem to have got in with the wrong crowd', the voice says, setting Andrew's stall out. 

Soundtrack Saturday

We have a recently launched boutique cinema open in the shopping precinct near us, The Northern Light, in what used to be WH Smith. It shows all sorts of films and also puts on some interesting one offs. Chris Massey runs Sprechen, his Manchester based label that has put out records by Psychederek, Causeway and Steve Cobby this year and is celebrating ten years of action with a compilation called Ein Null. That's Chris in the photo above DJing in the cinema in Sale last week. 

In partnership with Richie V, Chris has being doing a series of events where they re- score silent movies from the 1920s with a pair of turntables, a mixer and a laptop, DJing a new soundtrack to German Expressionist films. In the summer they did Metropolis and Nosferatu. I missed both due to other commitments but last week they screened and re- scored The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari and I was able to go. 

The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari is a 1920 film directed by Robert Wiene and tells the story of a hypnotist, a somnambulist and a murder in a small German town. The film's writers- Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer- were scarred by their experiences with the military in the First World War and deeply distrustful of the authorities. Dr Caligari is not only one of the earliest cinema films, it's also thought to be the first with a twist ending. The film's sets are jagged and surreal, doors and windows at strange angles, and all very claustrophobic. The sleepwalker, Cesare, is played by Conrad Veidt...

Chris and Richie soundtrack the film's eighty minute running time with a variety of instrumental music, cutting, mixing and cross fading as the scenes and action changes. They squeeze a lot in, some of which I recognise (but I wish I'd made some notes immediately afterwards as I can't remember it all now). Michael Rother's unmistakable guitar sound glides in at one point, a neat cultural link between Weimar Germany and '70s krautrock. There is ambient and trip hop and towards the end a huge proggy guitar solo track blasts in. 

This is Fortana di Luna from Michael Rother's 1978 album Sterntaler which I'm sure wasn't what Chris and Richie played but it could easily have fitted in with their new score to The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari

Fortana di Luna

It made me more annoyed that I missed both Metropolis and Nosferatu. Chris and Richie are tackling The Passion Of Joan Of Arc next, a 1928 French silent film. 

Back in 2017 Factory Floor re- scored Metropolis and released their version of the soundtrack as a double CD/ four album box set. The project was commissioned by the London Science Museum to mark the 90th anniversary of the film's release and they performed their score live at the musuem's IMAX. Factory Floor are the perfect group to do Fritz Lang's film, their synth futurism the ideal match to the futuristic sci fi/ 20th century machine industrialism of Metropolis. Heart Of Data

Heart Of Data

Back in 1998 I saw Andrew Weatherall DJ live to a screening of Nosferatu at Manchester's Cornerhouse (it seems apt that DJing new scores to films was something that the pioneering Mr Weatherall was doing nearly three decades ago). It wasn't particularly busy. Andrew was set up at the front with two turntables and a box of records. On screen Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror played, black and white vampirism directed by F.W. Murnau with Max Schreck as Count Orlok bringing a plague to a small German town. Andrew's score was all weird ambient and massively pitched down trip hop and illbient and downtempo tracks. At some point many years alter some of us managed to identify that one of the tracks was from Leila's 1998 album Like Weather but I can't now recall which track. Let's have this one...

Space, Love

The screening and Weatherall re- scoring of Nosferatu was memorable for another reason. Lou was fairly heavily pregnant with Isaac and at one crucial point in the film, as the images and music reached a crescendo, it clearly affected the unborn Isaac and one of his limbs, a hand or foot visibly bulged and moved in a wave like a shark's fin across Lou's stomach. 

Cosmically A Shambles

Polypores is a one man outfit from Preston, the work of Stephen James Buckley and a modular synth. In June this year Polypores released an album, Cosmically A Shambles, which I've been catching up with recently. The modular synth is an unpredictable instrument and that unpredictability seems to be built into the music, a whirl of bleeps and clicks, rhythms and spinning patterns, drum machines and melodies that never sit still, a constantly changing and seemingly organic sound The album opens with Lungs And Limbs and closes with Hazy Dazy, In between those two there are seven further slices of psychedelic electronic instrumentals. Whorl is skittish and expansive, the modular synth melody lines oscillating as the drum machine patters away beneath. 

Whorl

The rest of the album is just as good, the same but different- and endlessly inventive. You can find it at Bandcamp. Polypores performed live in one take for The state51 factory a year ago, nineteen minutes of modular synth joy. 

Polypores has been asked to play at the Harmonicon festival in Todmorden in October- my discovery of Cosmically A Shambles and a soon to come appearance in Todmorden is surely a cosmic coincidence that can't be ignored. Polypores is playing at the Unitarian Chapel on the Staurday night. Across the rest of the weekend, a celebration of 'stones, drones, folklore, walks and talks' Polypores is joined by The Transcendence Orchestra, writer David Keenan, Bridget Hayden and Jacqueline Anderson at various venues including (obvs) The Golden Lion.