Desert

We went to the desert twice during our trip to Morocco. On each occasion it was a mind blowing and profound experience. The first excursion was to a pool resort on the edge of the Sahara. We sunned ourselves, had some more delicious Moroccan food and looked out into the desert, looking at the ridges and wadi, the endless shale and rock extending into the distance. My brother- in- law Harvey and I took a wander out of the resort and into the desert. We didn't go too far for obvious reasons. It was pretty humbling...

The second visit was the following evening, a trip further into the Sahara to see the sunset and then have a meal and enjoy some evening entertainment from local musicians. The drive out there was an experience in itself, turning off the road and onto a dust track that went on and on, over bridges that crossed dried out river beds, past camels and quad biking, tents and partially constructed/ falling down buildings, down a dip that I wouldn't have attempted in a minibus, round some tight bends, eventually arriving at our desert destination. The view from my seat through the van's tinted windows presented me this shot...

And then this one with some camel riders appearing over the horizon...

I don't know about you but my childhood was peppered with deserts- Indian Jones films, TV, books, comics, pop videos, Silk Cut and Turkish Delight adverts, Lawrence of Arabia (in 1981 when I was eleven years old there was a fancy dress party. Most of the eleven year olds went as Dr. Who, characters from Star Wars or Adam Ant. I went as Lawrence of Arabia- I was that kind of eleven year old). To be out in the Sahara and see camels (admittedly ridden by tourists) coming into view over the ridge was jaw dropping. The desert provokes a genuine sense of awe- it's vast and ancient, it will be there forever, long after we're all gone, it continues to grow each year (as Manchester's New Fast Automatic Daffodils noted on their epic 1990 single Big)...

Big

Once we arrived at our destination we followed our guide up a hill to a ridge of rocks where we waited for the sunset. Staring out into the desert as the sun began to dip was something else, an experience that's difficult to put into words- the immensity of the desert, the feeling of being a very small part of everything, the lives of people who have survived in this environment for thousands of years, the sense of staring into the past somehow... it was all very moving. As a friend commented on Facebook recently, 'deserts speak'.

I've got loads more photos of the desert, many of which will inevitably appear accompanying posts here over the upcoming weeks. 

In March 2019 Andrew Weatherall played at The Beta Hotel in Marrakech, an event hosted by Faber and involving David Keenan, Bugged Out and Heavenly recordings. Andrew's set was a dub set and I imagine his seriously dubbed out selections would have sounded pretty otherworldly in Marrakech. The set wasn't recorded but Sean Johnston unearthed Andrew's source CDs and shared them with The Flightpath Estate two eyars ago. The tracks were sequenced in the order they appear on Andrew's discs and uploaded to Mixcloud. You can listen to them here, two hours and eleven minutes of Moroccan Weatherdub at The Beat Hotel. 

An Alternative Resurrection

A day late for an Easter Sunday resurrection but bank holiday Monday feels more appropriate- you might remember that in January 2024 I wrote a piece about an imagined alternative future for The Stone Roses, one where after the release of One Love in June 1990 they didn't blow it. You can re- read An Alternate History first if you want to. It was a post that seemed to download itself into my mind while out on a bike ride, a fully formed version of the 1990s where Ian, John, Mani and Reni had better advice, clearer heads and didn't get immediately bogged down in a post- Spike Island slump and court case, a world where they moved on, signed to Heavenly and released a series of singles and EPs, side stepping the drama and overbearing weight of delivering a second album. In my alternate history they end up at the millennium, back where they started in Sale, south Manchester, with an album that delivered on the promise the band had in that space between the release of Elephant Stone in October 1988 and then One Love/ Something's Burning in 1990. 

Elephant Stone

One of the spin offs from the post took place in Stockholm, Sweden. Scandinavia is a place rich in Roses lore. The band toured there in 1987, a bonding trip for the group and then they returned in 1990 for some warm up shows before the big definitive, generational statements at Spike Island and Glasgow Green. There was a memorable article in Q Magazine by Adrian Deevoy who took a trip with the band in their 1990 pomp, playing gigs, imbibing substances and dancing like fish (all doubled down on by United winning the European Cup Winner's Cup in Rotterdam as the interview and tour took place). 

The 2024 Stockholm spin off was from Jesse, the man behind 10:40, who read my post and was inspired to write a new/ lost Stone Roses track, titled An Alternative History. He sent it to me in the middle of last year and for a while there was a plan that I might sing on it but that came to naught (due to me it has to be said). Jesse released his three track EP yesterday, an Easter Sunday resurrection and also his birthday, three versions of his Stone Roses alternative history, under the banner 10:40 presents Retro Fit.

The original version is a five minute song that sounds like John Squire's next step in 1989, a song they band never quite finished perhaps- chorus pedal and chiming guitar, Reni's kick drum and snare and a very familiar voice coming through the line, straight outta Chorlton singing 'She's waiting...'. 

The lead version of the song on the EP is An Alternate History (Retro Fit Resurrection), an eight minute dance mix that spirals through time and space, landing back in the heady days of 89/ 90, the permanent summer of our youth- fringes, love beads, flares, long sleeved t- shirts, nights lost at the indie disco, clubbing and guitar bands clashing on the floor under the strobe light, maracas and wide eyed joy, Jesse's chiming guitar lines and 1990 shuffle lighting up the room... Ian's there, sucking in his cheeks and doing that loose limbed dance, 'There's a time and a place for everything/ I've got to get it through'....

Lavender Mist completes the EP, Squire's love of Jackson Pollock at the fore, evident on the sleeves of all those records and the titles of Roses B-sides Full Fathom Five and Guernica.

Lavender Mist is not just the Pollock Roses but the experimental, backwards tapes Roses too, a backwards effects version of An Alternative History to follow Don't Stop, Simone, Guernica and Full Fathom Five; a heavenly, spun out and blissed out version of the song with loops and echoes, Ian's voice spun backwards and the guitars reversed, the rhythms both forwards and backwards, everything a great, trippy whirl. Isn't it funny how you shine?

10:40 presents retro Fit: An Alternative History is here. Go get it, you'll love it. Tell Jesse I said hello. 

Ourika

Bagging Area's adventures in Morocco part two. Day two in Marrakech saw us up early for a trip to the Atlas Mountains, the ridge of snow capped mountains that separate the Sahara Desert from the sea, spanning Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The part we went to, Ourika, is about 40 km south of Marrakech, and gave us a good idea of the spread of the city out through its suburbs to the mountains, the swarm of traffic giving way to emptier roads. Driving in Morocco, especially in Marrakech but also out beyond the city can be a bit hair raising, motorbikes and scooters weaving in and out among cars and busses, pedestrians stepping out into roads and onto zebra crossings no- one seems to intend to stop for, cars overtaking constantly and everyone honking their horn as often as possible. Once out into the countryside our minibus took us to the foothills of the mountains, heading for the Ourika Valley, beginning to climb and wind our way through Berber villages. Funnily, the only piece of Western pop music we heard all week came on the local radio station as we began to climb the road pictured above, the van's tinny speakers and ever more spectacular scenery making Mr Bowie seem even more otherworldly than usual...

Ashes To Ashes

We stopped on the way for a break. Any taxi ride out of Marrakesh built in a break that involved us admiring a view and then visiting a shop where Berber products were offered to us- pottery, textiles, jewelry, Argon oil. We then re- boarded our bus and headed further into the mountains.

We were up early for the trip, our guide keen to get us to the waterfall as early as possible so it would be quiet. It was worth the early start. We began climbing the route following our guide, a scramble up rocks and mountain paths, over rickety foot bridges and through villages and houses built into the hillsides, all set up for tourists coming through several times a day. 

The local people are the Berber people, who speak a different language to the people in Marrakech (Shilha is the local dialect). They've eked an existence out in the mountains for centuries and today are pretty reliant on tourism. The climb eventually brought us to the waterfall and an opportunity to sit down, drink more mint tea and enjoy the mountain view. 

Our descent took us back to the village and lunch at a riverside restaurant. Yes, it felt touristy but hey, we were tourists, and it was quite an experience, sitting on cushions beside the fast flowing Ourika River, eating the wonderful food while a pair of local musicians played. Across the way, the parking of the minibuses and vans over the river from us was fairly alarming, their back ends hanging out over the drop to the river, Italian Job style. 

                                             

This is Goul El Hak El Mont Kayna by Moroccan singer Najat Aatabou, a song from 1992. If you click play and let it run you'll recognise the riff that comes hits at fifty seconds, an instant blast of Moroccan music that ended up with Ed and Tom Chemical settling out of court after they borrowed it for their song Galvanize. 

Marrakech

Marrakech was amazing, an unforgettable experience and unlike anywhere I've been before. Apologies if Bagging Area becomes a bit of a travel blog over the next few days. I'll try to supply music to go along with the photos and writing and see where things go- this blog has never really planned more than a few days ahead. We landed at Marrakech airport last Sunday morning having flown out of Manchester at 6.30 am straight into the hustle and bustle of Marrakech. My nice had booked our accommodation for the five of us, a four bedroom house (a riad) in the centre of the city. 

The riad was in the medina, down a long, twisting back alley which if we hadn't had a guide to meet us when we got to the top of the alleyway, we'd have thought twice about going all the way to the end of. Once down at the end, past the permanent group of young men hanging out on one of the corners, dodging the scooters and motorcycles that pepper the streets, roads and passageways, we went through a set of grilled gates and to our front door which led us into this...

The riad was central, a ten minute walk from the souk but inside it was another world, an oasis of calm with a roof terrace. Five times a day the sound of the muezzin calling people to prayer echoed out over the city, one of the muezzin starting it and then others joining in, harmonising- an unearthly and very moving sound. 

The souk is a maze of streets and alleyways filled with shops and market stalls selling all the Moroccan goods you can think of- tea pots and glasses for drinking mint tin, spices, leather goods, slippers, scarves, ceremonial daggers, bracelets and bangles, kaftans, earrings, rugs, hats, meat- as well as more modern goods- iPhones, headphones, football shirts- with the vendors constantly offering you prices and telling you to come and have a look. 

Haggling is part of the process for every transaction in the souk- they offer you a price, then drop it slightly, you offer a lower one, they counter, you get a note out which you're happy to pay- it takes some getting used to. The streets are jam packed in places. If you stop for a moment to glance at an item or make any eye contact, you get an offer to buy something. Wandering round the souk was amazing and with no real street names or sings, very easy to get lost in. We managed to track our way back to the riad but got hopelessly lost one evening looking for the main square (Jemaa el-Fnaa). 

We had five days, spending several of them exploring Marrakech- the main square during the day and at night is a world in itself. During the day it's filled with fruit and spice stalls, snake charmers with cobras, men with sad looking monkeys on chains available for photos and women painting henna tattoos. At night, the square has a different energy, rammed with locals and tourists, scores of local bands of musicians and dancers playing Berber music- percussionists with qraqebs (large castanet like instruments) and hand drums surrounding a single guitarist playing a gnawa or gimbri and men chanting and singing. The music was incredible, very rootsy and funky, the riffs played by the guitarists sounding like the basis for so much 20th century guitar music, the blues and the 60s bands onward, with North African percussion and rhythms.

Everyone's looking for money, everyone expects to be tipped. It takes a little getting used to but was a joy to experience and the scare stories you can find on the internet about pickpockets, abusive comments to western women and rip off merchants were unfounded in our experience, and apart from one meal which left me sidelined for a day, the food was incredible. The Moroccan specialty is tagine, chicken and lemon or mince and eggs cooked in tagine pots and served with rice or couscous, lots of spices and flavours. Mint tea and strong coffee. Nutty biscuits and pastries. 

We had a load of other adventures- a day in the Atlas Mountains climbing to a waterfall with dinner on cushions by a river, a day at a pool in the desert and a night seeing the sunset in the Western Sahara which blew my mind- but I'll come to them over the next few days. 

In our several taxi rides to and from places the radio stations were almost always playing Moroccan or African music. Some on the spot Googling and use of Shazam took place. One of the artists that we heard several times and who sounded great while driving out of Marrakech, swerving across lanes and dodging motorcyclists, scooterists and pedestrians, through the suburbs with blocks of flats and corner cafes, petrol stations with queues of scooters and roadside sellers of fruit and mint, was Bombino, a Tuareg singer and guitarist from Niger. This song is Mahegagh (What Shall I Do?), a track from (I think) 2012- eleven minutes of Saharan desert blues. 

Looking At The World Through The Sunset In Your Eyes

No Sunday mix today and no more posts until next weekend either; we're off to Marrakesh, Morocco for a few days, a holiday to celebrate my brother-in -law's 60th. Marrakesh is by all accounts an busy and vibrant city, with plenty of exploring to be done in the Medina, the souks, the palaces and gardens. We also have an excursion to the Atlas mountains planned which should be good. 

Graham Nash wrote this song while on the train from Casablanca to Marrakesh in 1969, a reaction to everything and everyone he saw on the train. The Hollies rejected the song as not commercial enough- Nash was already moving beyond The Hollies and the song became a Crosby, Stills and Nash one, recorded for their 1969 debut. It was also a May '69 CSN single. 

Marrakesh Express

In the interests of balance Iggy Pop has said that Marrakesh Express 'may be the worst song ever written.'

Funtime

Back next weekend. See you then. 

Soundtrack Saturday

Soundtrack Saturday took a two week detour into TV cop show theme tunes with a pair of 80s classics- the Balearic beauty of Mike Post's Hill Street Blues theme and Jan Hammer's day- glo pastel shoot out for Miami Vice. This week's post goes a decade further back and finds Mike Post in the songwriting seat again with the theme to The Rockford Files...

The Rockford Files Theme

The theme tune was released in 1975, co- written by Pete Carpenter and featuring that distinctive guitar solo from session guitarist Dan Ferguson on dobro guitar and electric guitar plus a solo on MiniMoog by Mike Post. As with Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice you're going to want to see the visuals of the title sequence as well as the audio, not to mention Jim Rockford (James Garner) and the famous answer machine message...

The Rockford Files ran from 1974 to 1980 (and then in a permanent loop of repeats on early evening TV in the UK). Rockford was a down at heel private detective, lived in a trailer near Malibu Beach, was always broke and often ended up getting a beating in fist fights. In one of those odd trans- Atlantic cultural exchanges, the theme tune to The Rockford Files became the music Tranmere Rovers run on the pitch to at home games at Prenton Park, Birkenhead. Tranmere are the team of Nigel Blackwell of Half Man Half Biscuit, the man who should the next poet laureate. 

Picking a song from my extensive HMHB folders I found this one, Tommy Walsh's Eco House, which includes a reference in the opening line to another TV detective, this time Medieval sleuth Cadfael...

Tommy Walsh's Eco House

Nigel's taken '90 Bisodol/ He's had enough of Tommy Walsh's eco house... the only bloke from Harpurhey/ Who wasn't at the Free Trade Hall'. 

'While you're capturing the zeitgeist/ They're widening the motorway'. 

Volcanic Tongue

Last year I did a series of posts called Bagging Area Book Club and never got around to writing about any of David Keenan's books, several of which were on a list of potential posts. His appearance at AW62 has given me the prompt I needed to do it and also coincides with the release of an album and a book- both called Volcanic Tongue, both by Keenan.

Volcanic Tongue- A Time Travelling Evangelist's Guide To Late 20th Century Underground Music (the book) is a compendium of David's writing about music- interviews, articles, think pieces and in depth conversations with the likes of Nick Cave, Kevin Shields and John Martyn. It's a big book, in all senses- thick and with a heavy page count but also big in terms of ideas and creativity. 

Volcanic Tongue (the album) is a compilation of songs from bands that passed through the Glasgow record shop David ran with his partner Heather Leigh, also called Volcanic Tongue. The bands on the album, twenty of them, are from the underground, the underground of the underground, bands that self- released small runs of albums, handed out CD- Rs at gigs, put on nights in rooms above pubs and hoped get to enough people through the door to break even, bands that passed through David and Heather's shop between 2005 and 2015. Rock n' roll bands, folk bands, psychedelic bands, ambient outfits, drone duos, bands like Ashtray Navigations (blissed out drone/ folk) and Idea Fire Company (piano ambient/ avant garde), Counter Intuits (scuzzed up and fuzzed up garage rock) and Bronze Horse (acoustic guitar, handclaps and echo). Find it at Bandcamp, double vinyl and digital, a treasure trove of music. 

David Keenan's novels are a wild trip. The first I read was the legendary This Is Memorial Device, a love letter to the world of post punk bands and a fictional Airdrie rock group, Memorial Device. For The Good Times is set in Belfast during the 1970s, a tense tale of an IRA foot soldier, a kidnapping and Perry Como, a book that delves deep into a murky demi- world. I read Xstabeth not long after, a novel with some genuinely breathtaking passages, a story told by a teenage girl from St Petersburg, Russia. Xstabeth is haunted by ghosts and saints, Russian history and literature. Mystical and I found quite profoundly affecting. The fourth Keenan novel I tackled was Monument Maker, a weighty, experimental, time travelling story that has little actual narrative and detours into theology, sex, enigmas, the siege of Khartoum, Medieval cathedrals, the pyramids and God knows what else. It's partly also an exercise in what an author can do with the written page. It's both confusing and inspiring. 

David's partner Heather Leigh recorded an album in 2020, Glory Days- modernist folk music played on pedal steel and synth that sounds like the soundtrack to any and all of the above. 

In Fade

Last Of The Sell Outs

Escape- Ism is Ian Svenonius and Sandy Denton. They have an album called Charge Of The Love Brigade, a title I wish I'd thought of. Ian Svenonius has been declaring manifestos and making grand statements since his days in Washington D.C. punk testifiers Nation Of Ulysses in the late 80s and their 13 Point Program To Destroy America (a program which feels suddenly very relevant again). Ian and Sandy make similarly great claims for Escape- Ism, including that the band is 'found- sound dream- drama', an 'act of musical vandalism' that will 're- purpose music as we know it', music that will bring bourgeois society to an end and that will be enjoyed by 'musicians, amateurs and non- musicians but also plant life, wild animals and even inanimate object such as rocks'. Who am I to disagree?

This is Last Of The Sell Outs, a song that seems to gain and reveal more with each listen, an organ/ synth chord sequence and drum machine providing low fi backing to Ian's meditation on the creative and commercial process. The gnarly guitar part at the end is a joy too. 

AW62

AW62 was last weekend, a proper gathering of the clans at The Golden Lion in Todmorden, an 18th century stone walled pub nestled into a gap between a hill and the canal, to celebrate the life of Andrew Weatherall on what would have been his 62nd birthday. Andrew's brother Ian, one of the event's key movers, said that it was planned as a party that had 'everything except Andrew'. The line up of DJs and acts was testament to the spirit of the man, a diverse and exceptional bunch of DJs, writers, artists, producers, publishers and bands. 

Some highlights from a weekend packed full of them- this is necessarily a highly selective account drawn from my at times unreliable memories. Everyone who attended will have their own version and highlights but these were some of mine. 

Friday night saw Richard Fearless DJing in the downstairs bar, a vinyl techno masterclass- minimal, sleek, machine music, emotive and huge sounding on the pub's recently upgraded sound system, causing quite a stir among the crowd and packing the space in front of the DJ booth out with dancers. 

I took this picture while Fearless was playing. It may not be in focus or even a vaguely coherent picture but it sums the night up quite well from where I was standing. 

Saturday night was split between upstairs and downstairs. Upstairs Duncan Gray played a house set and then Scott Fraser took over at midnight. Downstairs David Holmes headlined, picking up where Matt Hum left off. David has played The Golden Lion often in recent years. He changes his set every time, saying he doesn't plan it too much, just goes with the flow and the feel in the pub. His set on Saturday night was out of this world, a huge range of dance music, from spangly chuggers to amped up noise, breakbeats and the sudden switching to huge piano tracks. Towards the end of his set, a 2 am finish, I was stuck in a corner by the door, just enjoying the music and the volume. Joe Strummer's voice came out of the speakers, his famous 'people can do anything...' speech from a radio show followed by ecstatic synth noise (an unreleased Holmes and Matty Skylab track, David said afterwards). There was a pause at 2am and then two or three more tunes, one a rumbly, garage band guitar song, one an explosion of synth chords, a wall of noise, and then finishing with the huge, extended Leftside Wobble remix of Tomorrow Never Knows, The Beatles most experimental, most progressive song filling the pub and scrambling heads. Thoughts were indeed laid down and voids were very much surrendered to. 

Saturday afternoon was our turn to play again, The Flightpath Estate DJs given the privilege of being part of the proceedings. Me, Baz, Martin, Dan and Mark played throughout the afternoon and into the evening. At one point I looked out into the space in front of the booth and saw author David Keenan and White Rabbit Books publisher Lee Brackstone  dancing and singing along to a song I was playing, the magnificent One Of Those Things by Dexys, from 1985 (a song even Kevin Rowland eventually had to accept he'd ripped off from Warren Zevon's Werewolves Of London). 

One Of Those Things

I spoke to David Keenan at some point, excitedly telling him about the experience I had reading Xstabeth a few years ago, a book which at several points blew my mind a little. This photo has me and David, me somewhat out of focus, mind probably still blown. 

Saturday afternoon also saw the fabled raffle and auction, Claire Doll's hard work and creativity raising  thousands of pounds for charity, Weatherdolls and Sabres cross stitch and a box of records found in Andrew's lock up when it was cleared out, promo copies of the David Holmes remix of Smokebelch and other delights. Golden Lion landlady Gig conducted the auction action in her own inimitable style. Holmes bid for and won this Gnostic Sonics banner.

Sunday saw the crowds, fans, punters and artists drawn back to the pub and its beer garden, bathed in early April sunshine. Andrew's friends Sherman and Curley played dub and ambient sounds the whole afternoon. Meanwhile the Sunday afternoon literary event came in three parts- a Lee Brackstone hosted discussion with Andrew's partner of seventeen years Lizzie Walker, Two Lone Swordsman guitarist Chris Rotter, Ian Weatherall and The Flightpath's own Martin Brannagan, Lee asking the questions which included 'when did you first meet Andrew?' which drew a range of funny responses. 

The second part was Lee and David Keenan, an interview and a reading from his new book Volcanic Tongue. The third was Keenan interviewing  Adrian Sherwood, a fascinating half hour with one of Andrew's heroes, the main man of UK dub whose reminiscences and thoughts could and should fill a book. David Keenan (and David Holmes, sitting on the front row) unpicking all sorts of aspects of On U Sound and Sherwood's music and career and the nature of dub. Genuinely amazing to sit in on and as much a part of the weekend as the DJs and music. 

Adrian Sherwood The Producers Series #1

This hour long Sherwood mix comes from the Test Pressing blog, published back in 2010. The tracklist can be found at Test Pressing- Creation Rebel, African Head Charge, Dub Syndicate and Doctor Pablo all feature. 

Sunday night finished with the twin attack of The Jonny Halifax Invocation playing live upstairs and Sherwood DJing downstairs. Criminally I missed both- having been at The Lion since Friday night, suffering from a distinct lack of sleep and having to drive home at some point that night, I called it a day at around 6 pm. 

Everyone involved in AW62 should give themselves a well earned pat on the back and maybe have a bit of a lie down- Waka and Gig at The Golden Lion, Ian Weatherall, Claire, Lizzie and Curley with the raffle and auction and merch, all the DJs and bands, Lee and David bringing the literature angle (books and writing were as big for Mr Weatherall as music was). It was a brilliant weekend and event- heart warming and inclusive, packed with energising and exciting music, and filled with great people. The Lion always draws a lovely bunch of punters and AW62 was no exception. And when the lie down is over and everyone's recovered, more please next year...

Weak Sun

Fans of instrumental, dark ambient, psyche rock should step this way. Weak Sun is the debut album from Sonar//Radar, a Leicester four piece, all veterans of other bands from the city of Claudio Ranieri and Richard III, bringing guitars, drums and bass together with synths and piano. The album is currently only digital but sequenced like a vinyl record, a short burst of drone and radio waves/ voices forming the intro to side 1, a track called Intro To Side 1, which then fades away for Baksheesh For Imi, a much longer piece of music, six minutes of synth, piano and a ghostly guitar lines all layered over the rumble of bass and drums. Wolf Eel follows, bursts of feedback from a guitar amp and then a ringing guitar line, a post- rock, Tortoise feel, the guitar taking the lead. Fifty three seconds of gorgeous ambient wobble, Too Many Novels, takes us towards Bad News From Outer Space, what would be side 1's end point- more ominous sounds from the Midlands- radio waves, static/ Velcro being unripped, the tick of the cymbal, guitar notes from the ghost of Michael Karoli's guitar, the sound of something bad coming through the line. 

Side 2 opens up slowly, one and a half minutes of drone and atmospherics and leads into the slightly softer, calmer notes of Barbel Hook, a track which spins around a minute in, the drums suddenly kicking the tempo up and the post- rock guitars and drums are back with echoes of Mogwai. The album's title track Weak Sun is the longest piece of music here, eight and a half minutes, the soundtrack to a sci fi/ folk horror short film, a totally absorbing trip with the synth taking the topline and the guitars, piano, bass and drums creating a dark dreamworld backdrop. The final track is a live track, The Lucky Ones Died First, the post- rock/ psyche rock live and direct from a stage somewhere in the East Midlands/ the outer reaches of space. Get Weak Sun at Bandcamp

Monday's Long Song

I got back from AW62 at The Golden Lion last night having had a wonderful weekend in great company, an incredible line up of artists, some brilliant moments in a truly magical and a concurrent lack of sleep. I'll write a longer, more detailed piece and post it later in the week. In the meantime, here's a long song from Friday night. Rusty and Rotter were playing records in the downstairs bar, the place was filling up nicely with lots of familiar faces and some new ones too and from the Lion's sound system the intense, ecstatic noise of Fuck Buttons began pumping out- waves of sheer joy, oceans of sound, bleeps and ripples, eventually the thud of a kick drum, building and building, repetition and momentum.

Surf Solar was released as a single. It came out on 7", an edited version, but the album one is over ten minutes long- from Tarot Sport, produced by Andrew Weatherall, a job so demanding- the intensity of the music- that he compared it to hard physical labour. What a sound the three of them cooked up though...

Surf Solar

Forty Five Minutes Of Two Lone Swordsmen

At the airport in Belfast they have robots to serve your breakfast. You have to go to the till and speak to a human to order but then the human loads your mugs and plates of food onto these robots and they bring them to your table. The eight year old me reading 2000AD in 1978 would have been beside himself at this aspect of the future but somehow, it just seemed a bit ridiculous. They even give the robot a smiley face to make them seem more human.

None of which has much to do with today's post and Sunday mix- except that the music Two Lone Swordsmen made is still far more of the future, more the soundtrack to 2000AD, than the robots at Belfast airport ever will be. When Andrew Weatherall formed Two Lone Swordsmen with Keith Tenniswood they made it a mission to go further and deeper, to take a more thorough and more purist approach to electronic music. After the sprawling magnificence of 1996's The Fifth Mission (Return To The Flightpath Estate) which went from stoned, paranoid ambience to big beat to two step and back again, they drilled deeper- minimal, brutalist electronic machine funk, ambient techno and glitchy dark electronic dub (with a detour into hip hop on A Virus With Shoes and then an exciting mutation into garage rock and rockabilly). Sometimes the music seemed a bit unfriendly and it lost a few people along the way but this being Mr Weatherall, there's no shortage of gold in among the darkness. 

This forty five minute mix is a celebration of Andrew's birthday today- he would have been 62 today. Many of his friends and family are at The Golden Lion today, day three of AW62 which will end tonight with a live performance by The Jonny Halifax Invocation (who have promised some live band TLS action) and a dub set from Adrian Sherwood. Happy birthday Andrew.

Forty Five Minutes Of Two Lone Swordsmen

• Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi) (Two Lone Swordsmen Dub)
• We Change The Frequency
• Cotton Stains
• Lino Square
• Black Commandments
• Untitled Two Lone Swordsmen Remix
• Glide By Shooting
• Hope We Never Surface

Saint Etienne's 2000 album Sound Of Water was a bit of a departure for them. The Two Lone Swordsmen Dub of it's single Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi) was a deconstruction, reducing the tune to its minimal dub basics, the wobbly bass a particular treat.

We Change The Frequency is from 1998's Stay Down, sometimes the TLS album I think is my favourite and one which has really grown over the years, lots of short, repetitive mechanical pieces and some gorgeous ambient techno, everything submerged in oceanic depths of bass and echo (like the deep sea divers on the cover). Hope We Never Surface is the opening track and always seems to be like a door opening... or a hatch...

Cotton Stains is on 2000's Tiny Reminders, the furthest and most purist they went, tunnel vision electro Six sides of vinyl, each disc starting with a track made up of static, a tiny reminder, before drilling into the netherworld of basement glitchy electronic bass and techno. Cotton Stains is the real sound of robots serving up breakfasts at airports- just before they declare independence and overthrow the security. 

Lino Square is from The Fifth Mission (Return To The Flightpath Estate), a fractured, mechanised but funky little number with a wiggy synth pattern kicking in after a few minutes. 

Black Commandments is from a 7" single that came with an EP, A Bag Of Blue Sparks, released on Warp in 1998, that included the track Gay Spunk (a title borrowed from Peter Hook's bass amp spray paint message).  

Untiled Two Lone Swordsmen is a remix of Ganger's Trilogy, a 12" from 1998, a nine minutes long and dusty with a flicker of guitar running through it. Ganger were from Glasgow, post- rock and krauty.

Glide By Shooting is one of the finest TLS tracks, a track on the double vinyl remix EP Swimming Not Skimming. Depth over surface. Eight minutes of sleek, mesmerising brilliance. 

Soundtrack Saturday At AW62

Today is day two of AW62 at The Golden Lion, a weekend celebration of the life of Andrew Weatherall at one of his favourite places, the day before what would have been his sixty- second birthday. The photo above is from our trip to Belfast in February. We were on a bus going round the city centre, turned a corner and there it was, this mural of the man. Serendipity. 

Saturdays in 2025 have all been soundtrack posts, a year long series of songs and tracks from film and TV. In 1994 the film Shopping came out, a Paul Anderson film about a group of British teenagers into joyriding and ramraiding with some future stars among the cast (Jude Law, Sean Pertwee and Sophie Frost) and some people who were already stars (Sean Bean, Marianne Faithful and Jonathan Pryce). I don't think I've seen it since 1994 and don't remember much about it except that it opens with the jaw dropping, spine tingling, twisted hip hop magnificence of Sabres Of Paradise's Theme.

Theme 

The soundtrack pulls together lots of mid 90s hip hop and rap- The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy, Credit To The Nation, Kaliphz, Stereo MCs- along with Senser, Smith and Mighty, Utah Saints, Orbital, Salt 'N' Pepa, Shakespears Sister, EMF and more. Andrew appears again twice, once with Sabres v James (Jam J Spaghetti Steamhammer) and once as producer on One Dove's Why Don't You Take Me.

Jam J 

Jam J is somewhat overlooked in the Sabres back catalogue, a four track/ remix 12" that becomes a thirty three minute suite of hypnotic dubtronica/ dub techno, James and Brian Eno completely reworked into the Sabres netherworld, the guitars eventually coming through as Andrew, Jagz and Gary take us on a dub excursion. It's best heard as one unbroken piece of music, from Phase 1 to Phase 4. 

• Phase 1 (Arena Dub)
• Phase 2 (Amphetamine Pulsate)
• Phase 3 (Sabresonic Tremelo Dub)
• Phase 4 (Spaghetti Steamhammer)

In 1996 Andrew made a brief foray into the world of film as an actor, appearing as a shaven headed club owner called Buddha in a long forgotten London gangster film Hard Men, in a case of mistaken identity.

AW62 And The Return Of Death In Vegas

Today is the first day of the AW62 at Todmorden's Golden Lion, a three day weekender to celebrate what would have been Andrew Weatherall's 62nd birthday (6th April, Sunday). The line up is a bit of a dream, kicking off tonight with Richard Fearless playing downstairs in the pub, ably supported by Rusty and Rotter, while Fantastic Twins play upstairs. On Saturday David Holmes headlines with Duncan Gray and Scott Fraser both playing, Matt Hum on before David. From 2pm on Saturday through until 8ish, me and my friends in The Flightpath Estate have the privilege of DJing for the afternoon and evening crowds- it's an honour and a joy. 

Sunday keeps the fun going with a Sherman and Curley dub set, a White Rabbit literary discussion (hosted by Lee Brackstone with the Flightpath's Martin joining the panel) and then to finish the weekend off, The Jonny Halifax Invocation playing live upstairs while Adrian Sherwood DJs downstairs. The evening events are all sold out but the Saturday and Sunday afternoon events and sessions are free- if you're in the area, come down and say hello, it'll be great. 

By way of happy coincidence Friday night's headliner Richard Fearless announced the release of a new Death In Vegas album a few days ago with the appearance of a new track- Death Mask. Fearless has been mining an increasingly intense and beautiful techno seam for over a decade now, going deeper and deeper into the techno- earth's core. 2011's Trans- Love Energies and 2016's Transmission albums, 2018's Honey 12", his pair of albums under his Fearless name- Deep Rave Memory and its ambient techno counterpart Future Rave Memory- plus various one off singles on his Drone label such as 2017's mighty Sweet Venus, have all lit up the Bagging Area stereo, streamlined machine music of the highest order that straddles the line between ice cold and emotional overload. Death Mask fits right into that techno continuum, seven minutes of rattly drum machines and thudding kick drum, dub's space echo, slightly anxiety inducing synths, a squeak that nibbles away at the upper end and the sweet rush of momentum. Music to engulf and to immerse oneself in...

The tracks were all recorded inside Richard's Metal Box, a shipping container overlooking the Thames in East London. If any music sounds like it was recorded inside a shipping container, it's the music on Death Mask. Death Mask and the squally and equally intense While My Machines Gently Weep are both available over at Bandcamp ahead of the rest of the nine track album, which comes out in early June. 

Segundo Natureza

My friend in Sao Paulo Eduardo sent me an EP by Oe called Elogio da Segunda Natureza (which translates I think as In Praise Of Second Nature). Oe is one of the many aliases used by Professor Marcus and on the four tracks of the EP he heads deep into the ambient/ drone/ experimental zone. 

The first- Forst 1975- is a tremendous piece of ambient music, one that never rests or sits still but buzzes and hums constantly, a lovely drone of synths and keys, wobbling and oscillating. What sounds like a guitar through a wah wah pedal interrupts at two and a half minutes before the drums return and everything builds back in. 

Sismografia sets out from a similar place, more fractured and ambient with pulses like the sound of something coming from distant stars. 

There are voices at the start of Visagem, coming from a radio that's not properly tuned in. Bursts of static and distortion. Deep synth chords. Rips in the fabric of space and time. Found sounds from somewhere else. 

The final emission is The Wake, opening with rapid skippity drums and a piano chord clanging, then layers of sounds- who knows what, keys, guitars, synths- and a long distorted keening guitar line. The Wake breaks down into piano notes and some calm- then the drums come back, doubling the tempo and pushing on again. Really impressive stuff, rich with detail and very absorbing. Elogio de Segunda Natureza is at Bandcamp. 

When I Think Of All The Things I've Done

A few weeks ago I decided to start working my way through Lou Reed's solo albums, sparked by a Lou Reed post at The Vinyl Villain last year and then by my rediscovery of his 1973 album Berlin, an album that is possibly his 70s masterpiece but also a heavy trip into the netherworld story of Jim and Caroline- drugs, domestic abuse, children being taken into care, ending with death. An album that makes some people fell that they need to brace themselves for before dropping the stylus on the vinyl. 

I'd decided that this irregular, meandering Lou Reed extravaganza should be done as far as possible by listening to the albums on second hand vinyl, surely the most Lou Reed of all the formats. I was planning to move on to Sally Can't Dance or Coney Island Baby but while walking out from work a couple of weeks ago to pop to the post office I noticed that the fools have opened a second hand record shop just round the corner from my school. Why would they do that? Don't they know the last thing I need is the opportunity to buy records near my workplace? Luckily it was closed but when I walked past/ went back a few days later it was open and flicking through the Lou Reed/ Velvet Underground section saw a copy of Lou's self- titled 1972 solo debut. And that was how I ended up owning a copy of a rather overlooked and unfancied Lou Reed solo album- and also how I realised that I was taking this Lou Reed trip seriously.

Lou's solo debut is a curious record. It seems it was largely seen as disappointing, a damp squib, on release. Lou was two years on from leaving The Velvet Underground, still signed to RCA/ Victor and put into a studio in Willesden, London with a load of session musicians including Rick Wakeman and Steve Howe of Yes. The album's sessions took place between December '71 and January '72, usually in close to total darkness (at Lou's request). Eight of the ten songs are leftovers from The Velvets, some of them unreleased in their original until the mid 80s when VU came out. The production is odd, it sounds unbalanced. Guitars and drums leap around in the mix, sometimes too murky and sometimes too bright, the drums and cymbals ridiculously loud and present in the mix on some songs. Lou is in good voice and the songs are among some of his best. I approached the album with an open mind- once I'd got past the fairly awful front cover, a very early 70s airbrush painting of a Faberge egg and a duckling about to be engulfed by a wave swooshing down a New York street- and found that it has a lot to enjoy inside its fifty three year old grooves. 

I Can't Stand It is one of my favourite Velvets songs, the 2014 remixed version especially, Bo Diddley guitars and drums and Lou's nonsense lyrics about it being hard to be a man and living with thirteen dead cats. The version that opens Lou's solo album is blunt early 70s rock, session men electric guitars and drums, Lou's familiar sneer intact but supported by female backing vocals. It kicks along, no nonsense style. Going Down follows, piano and country guitar, Lou's voice now in gentle, three in the morning mode, seeing things clearly- 

'Time's not what it seems/ It just seems longer when you're lonely in this world/ Everything, it seems/ Would be brighter if your nights were spent with some girl'

It shifts at two minutes and he's crooning now, the backing vocals lower in the mix and the drums tumbling. Lovely stuff. Walk It And Talk It purloins the riff from Brown Sugar and surrounds it with session musician rock, the players trying to sound sloppy- the production is all over the place, partly muddy and partly trebly. Lisa Says follows, a gorgeous song, Lou and piano and the band more sympathetic now, a late night basement cabaret feel- at three minutes everything changes, the song stops and restarts as a show tune. It should be ridiculous but Lou pulls it off and then slips back into the original song at the end, Lou and the backing singers coming together, 'Lisa says...'. Side one ends with Berlin, the song that would be the fulcrum of the album of the same name a year later, Lou again crooning and sounding great over five minutes of the song, candle light and Dubonnet and 'it was very nice'.

Side two really works (despite the production flaws). I Love You is a minor gem, the simplest love song he wrote, a swirl of country guitars and acoustics and Lou's voice- then the drums thump in and we're exactly where early 70s, post- Velvets Lou Reed should be.

I Love You

It's followed by Wild Child, a electrifying rocker with arch, observational lyrics about Chuck, Bill, Betty and Ed and the wild child of the title, a song that could sit on any of his more celebrated 70s albums. 

Wild Child

Love Makes You Feel is also great even if the odd decision to mix the drums and cymbals really high in the mix nearly spoil it- Lou at his street poet best with Steve Howe's guitars fizzing around the speakers. Lou sings the chorus line, 'love makes you feel ten foot tall', the drums and guitars crash around, and everything sounds alive and vital. Ride Into The Sun, yet another unreleased Velvets song, ringing guitars and cardboard box drumming, two note vocals and the messy production actually adding rather than taking away. Lou Reed finishes with Ocean, a song the Velvets recorded in 1969 but didn't release and which wouldn't see the light of day until VU in 1985. Ocean is a key Reed/ Velvets song, arguably as good as any that he and they wrote and recorded. Lou's solo version opens with a gong and splash cymbals, then the bass and guitar sound that would inspire dozens of groups not yet even formed, the swirl of instruments sounding, yes, like the waves crashing on the shore, and Lou singing adrift on a raft, down by the sea. Drama and despair, New York cool up against London session men. 

Lou Reed is an album which feels flawed but has some good moments at its core, and which would have benefitted from better production and possibly from less accomplished musicians at times, but which catches fire more often than it doesn't. It's very much a period piece and an outlet for songs he'd been sitting on for a few years. But it's fair to say, it also does not necessarily sound like an album by a man who's going to light up the early/ mid 70s with some of its most distinctive rock songs.

Which is what happened a few months later he released Transformer. 

Strange Little Consequence

I spent Sunday afternoon at Yes in Manchester, a free event with the added promise of a free pint for the first hundred people through the door- Daniel Avery, Syd Minski (of Working Men's Club) and Ghost Culture DJing in the main bar. Two years ago Daniel did a similar session at Yes and it was really good so I didn't need asking twice to go again for some Sunday afternoon/ Mother's Day techno. 

I got there at 2pm and stayed for a few hours. By the time I left it was gathering pace, the bar filling and the music getting quite loud and thumpy, techno's promise kicking in. At the start Daniel was playing ambient techno, a sound he's made his own since 2019, and the bpms were slow. Death In Vegas' 1999 track Soul Auctioneer, pitched down a bit, was played along with The Black Dog's minimal techno take on Bjork. Syd took over and jolted it up a bit with some noisy synth action and then Ghost Culture played Depeche Mode's Never Let Me Down and Bowie's The Man Who Sold The World. The Cure in remixed form appeared and then things got increasingly more techno and intense. It was good fun and I wish I'd stayed longer.

The trio have joined forces to make music too, as Demise Of Love. The first fruits of this are a track called Strange Little Consequence, which starts out very alienated and then goes all dreamy when the synth chords wash in. Everything's up in the top end of the frequency range, with fractured drums and Syd's voice going from spoken to softly singing. If New Order were starting out now, and in their twenties again, this is probably what they'd sound like. 

Monday's Long Song

Kevin Rowland is a genius isn't he? Genuine genius is pretty rare- people use the word all the time in pop music but I think it probably applies to Kevin. The late 70s through to mid 80s run of albums Dexys Midnight Runners made show him to be an auteur, a songwriter who could tap into the popular consciousness (not once but twice, Geno and then Come On Eileen, were both via wildly different styles, huge pop records). His mercurial nature, obsessive character and anti- everyone else stance led to many arguments and departures. The first line up of Dexys jumped ship and his paranoia about Top Of The Pops appearances and perception that Al Archer was trying to steal the limelight by wearing a red woolen hat show him a difficult person to deal with and be around. But the music and the ideas and inspirations that went into it- genius.

1985's Don't Stand Me Down is one of those completely misunderstood on release albums, a record that only really came to be listened to and seen for what it was years later. Seven songs, four over six minutes long, with the quartet dressed in suits and ties on the sleeve, songs with lengthy spoken word sections, the songs forming a backdrop to conversations between Kevin and other members of the group. This Is What She's Like is the longest song on the record, a twelve and a half minute discussion between Kevin and Billy Adams, partly written by Helen O'Hara, in which he never really reveals what she's like but meanders all over the place, Kevin eventually explaining what she's not like and listing the people he dislikes- people who put creases in their jeans, people who are members of CND, people who have 'home bars and hi fis and all that stuff'. 

Kevin has mellowed somewhat since this song was written I think, is less wound up by those people, but he clearly meant it at the time. In the end he gets round to the point of the song, something he got from watching The Godfather, the part where Michael Corleone is in Sicily and gets married, and the word the Italians have for being stuck by a thunderbolt and falling in love. 

'That's my story', Kevin says, 'Strongest thing I've ever seen'. 

This Is What She's Like

Forty Five Minutes Of The Beta Band

The Beta Band's reformation to play some gigs in the autumn and maybe make some new music is one of 2025's most cheering stories (in a year not exactly over- burdened with cheering stories admittedly). Sometimes people say that The Beat Band 'should have been massive' but it's a comment that makes me scratch my head and think 'in what world?'. 

It's difficult to imagine a world in which songs, the sheer number of ideas, the weight of experimentalism and out there nature of what they were trying to do, crossing over into the world of millions of albums sold and stadium gigs. Steve Mason, John MacLean, Robin Jones and Gordon Anderson and later bassist Richard Greentree were not making music for the masses- and they seemed ill equipped to deal with that anyway. Besides, somethings are best kept n a smaller scale. 

The Three EPs overshadowed everything they did subsequently, all three albums that followed felt like they failed to meet the expectations the Three EPs placed on them. Listened to now, they seem less burdened by that weight and there's a lot worth listening to in The Beta Band (1999), Hot Shots II (2001) and Heroes To Zeroes (2004). 

Forty Five Minutes Of The Beta Band

• Push It Out
• Dry The Rain
• Eclipse
• Assessment
• Inner Meets Me (10:40's Outer Hebrides Dub)
• The Cow's Wrong
• The Hard One (Manmousse Remix)
• Simple 
• Dr. Baker

Push It Out is the opening track on 1998's Los Amigos Del Beta Bandidos, the third of the three EPs that announced them as the late 90s flagbearers for genre busting low fi, experimental indie. Is indie the right word? It seems too small for The Beta Band. Attempting to dissect or explain what makes Push It Out and the other songs from the three EPs is pointless. You just have to listen to them and feel them. The pots and pans percussion, dub basslines, acoustic guitars, samples and space/ atmosphere is solely their own. Steve Mason's vocals- double tracked, doleful, oblique, melancholic- sound more and more like a man trying to work his way through the depths of depression. Dr. Baker is stunning, a song that tells the story of the titular figure, a man whose 'dog was dead and wife was dead/ misery planned inside his head', a song with Mason singing the line 'see me lost inside' over and over, that sounds like a long dark night of the soul and yet somehow makes it all seem OK. Genius. Not a word I use lightly. 

Dry The Rain I wrote about recently. If it's what they end up being remembered for, it's probably more than enough. 

Eclipse is from 2001's Hot Shots II, a song about questions. The album was a complete piece of work, minimal hip hop beats and their experimental sound refined with the help of producer Colin C- Swing Emmanuel. 

Assessment opened their third and final album Heroes To Zeroes, self produced and then mixed by Nigel Godrich. Over blistering ringing electric guitars Steve Mason sings 'I think I cracked my skull on the way down/ I think I lost my head when I lay down' and everything goes leftwards from there. The crunchy guitar breakdown in the middle is exhilarating and the pile on of instruments at the end, trumpets joining in, is a rush. Simple is also from Heores To Zeros, more lovely, expansive experimental indie with another lost and broken lyric from Mason- 'I tired to do my own thing/ But the problem with your own thing/ Is you end up on your own'. 

Their albums are all overshadowed by The Three EPs but there's gold in all of the three proper albums and this is one of the pieces of gold. And the video is unbelievable. No- one else was doing this sort of thing or doing it so effortlessly (it cost them the band though- they split owing the record company one million  quid, partly the result of making expensive arty videos).

Inner Meet Me is from the second EP, The Patty Patty Sound. Jesse Fahnestock's 10:40 Dub is exactly what it says it is. Jesse's a big fan and I think you can hear it in a lot of his work. This edit originally came out on Paisley Dark in May 2021. 

The Cow's Wrong is from their self- titled 1999 debut album, an album they legendarily slagged off to the music press. 'It's fucking awful', they told the NME, 'one of the worst records that'll come out this year'. Experimental pop, ambient drone, excursions into trip hop and cosmic balladry crossed with folky psychedelia and late 90s indie together with the mass of acclaim for The Three EPs  took its toll on its makers. It's better than its creators had us believe at the time but its also dense and abstract, a complex and ambitious album. They also got into legal trouble with Bonnie Tyler and Jim Steinman on The Hard One. The Cow's Wrong and The Hard One are both from The Beta Band (The Hard One Manmousse Remix came out as an extra track on an extra disc, an ambient- abstract hip hop version of the song). They were following their noses and taking risks and that's what artists should do. 

Soundtrack Saturday

Following last Saturday's soundtrack into Hill Street Blues here's another 80s TV cop show with a very memorable theme tune and possibly the diametric opposite of Hill Street's gritty realism- the glitz and glamour of the waterfront world of Crockett and Tubbs and Miami Vice. 

Theme From Miami Vice

Miami Vice ran from 1984 to 1989. Jan Hammer's theme tune is a ridiculously over the top collision of synth pop and 80s rock guitar by Jan Hammer, a piece of music that says 1987 to me as much as anything else released that year- Strangeways Here We Come, It's A Sin, La Isla Bonita, Respectable, Pump Up The Volume, The One I Love and April Skies all included. It's also impossible to hear the tune without the opening titles flashing through my mind...

80s Miami was as alien a world as any for someone living in the north west of England in 1987, palm trees, flamingos, wind surfing, women in bikinis... none of these things featured much (if at all) in my seventeen year old life. Like the Balearic beauty of the Hill Street Blues theme tune, the theme tune to Miami Vice provides an instant Proustian rush.

Miami Vice was visually a riot of rich colours, buildings, cars, boats and clothing, Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas providing fashion inspiration (even in rain lashed northern England, rolled up suit jackets and loafers with no socks, pastel tees and white cotton trousers became sought after for a while but wasn't a look I ever dabbled with). I enjoyed Miami Vice in a sort of anti- indie kind of way. It's rollcall of guest stars from the music world was long and varied too- Miles Davis, James Brown, Leonard Cohen, Frankie Valli, Eartha Kitt and Sheena Easton all appeared, as did Phil Collins who I loathed then and still do.