Monday's Long Song

It sounds overblown not to mention a little pretentious to state that with the release of Selected Ambient Works 85- 92 in 1993 Richard D. James invented a new language for electronic and ambient music. Many of the elements he used- basslines from house and techno, spongy synth tones, clicky, repetitive rhythm tracks made from drum samples, a sound that felt ultra- modern and futuristic yet seemed anchored in something from the past- were already familiar but the way he put them together, the way as Aphex Twin he constructed and layered his tracks, was something else and new too. A problem with Selected Ambient Works is that it is almost too good, so full of beauty, ambient/ dance music with ambition and nuance, that what came after would never sound as good. Richard continued to make many, many great records, tracks that flipped what electronic music could be, but the magic he conjured up on the thirteen tracks that make up SAW is almost unique to that record. 

This is Tha, a nine minute odyssey that starts out with the sound  of a tap dripping and then transforms into ambient/ techno, outer/ inner space, excursion. 

Tha

Hiss, clicky drums, a warm bassline that dances about that I can almost see (I can definitely imagine it visually), the hint of voices, keyboard notes in a space above the rest of the track and a murky, middle of the night feel- an otherworldly, dream energy. 

Some of the music on it was made by a teenage Richard, using homemade equipment and recorded onto cassette. Jon Savage, a man who knows about many things but especially music, said that Selected Ambient Works 'defined a new techno primitive romanticism' and the primitive nature of the music is absolutely part of its beauty. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Colourbox

A few days ago I posted Colourbox's Tarantula and the wonderful Pandit Pam Pam v Darkinari cover version of it (out two days ago here). Eduardo sent me this video he made on Friday, filmed on the forty five minute flight between Sao Paulo and Rio. 

Today's forty five minute mix is some Colourbox tracks thrown together/ skillfully sequenced, a celebration of a band who threw soul, reggae and dub, electro, industrial and sampling together into a big stew and came up with some genuinely pioneering records between 1982 and 1987.

Some biographical details first.  Colourbox were formed in London in 1982, brothers Martyn and Steve Young, Ian Robbins and singer Debion Currie. Currie and Robbins left a year later, after the first single was released (Breakdown/ Tarantula) and singer Lorita Grahame joined. They signed to 4AD, a street counterpoint to the ethereal, indie/ gothic sounds of the rest of the 4AD line up (Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil) and released three albums, all called Colourbox, and a slew of great singles. In 1987 Colourbox and AR Kane collaborated as M/A/R/R/S and between them, despite a rather difficult studio relationship, created an international hit- Pump Up The Volume. Pop star fame and long running legal bother over Pump Up The Volume and sample clearance led both Martyn and Steve Young to abandon Colourbox. 4AD issued best ofs and  box sets and in 2000 Andrew Weatherall included them on his 9 'O' Clock Drop compilation. Steve Young died in 2016. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Colourbox

• Looks Like We're Shy One Horse
• Baby I Love You So (12" Mix)
• Breakdown
• Say You (12" Mix)
• Edit The Dragon
• Tarantula
• The Official Colourbox World Cup Theme
• Arena II

Looks Like We're Shy One Horse, packed with gun shots and Spaghetti Western samples, was the B-side to Colourbox's 1986 Baby I Love You So single. The slowed down dub section at the end is genuinely thrilling after six minutes of drum machines, guitars, keys, samples, river dredging bass and South London via the Great Plains.

The A- side was Baby I Love You So, a cover of a Jacob Miller and Augustus Pablo song from 1974. King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown was constructed around the dub version of it. Colourbox's cover is a dub version it its own right, a masterful and superbly produced slice of 80s British street sounds with a bassline that you could chew. 

Breakdown was Colourbox's debut single, released in 1982 with Debian Currie on vocals. Tarantula is industrial synth with a detached, numbed vocal. Breakdown is New Wave synthpop, a very of its time song but one that should be better known than it is. 

Say You was a 1984 single, a cover of a U- Roy song from 1976, one of those reggae songs that has a complicated back story with umpteen versions, dubs and covers. Colourbox's version is sweet 80s electro dub- soul. 

In 1985 Colourbox released their first full length album- Colourbox (a mini- album called Colourbox came out two years before). It included Just Give 'Em Whiskey which I wanted to include here but couldn't find a digital version and a cover of Keep Me Hangin' On, the Motown classic. William Orbit plays guitar on Manic. The first 10, 000 copies with a second album, also called, wait for it Colourbox. The mini- album had versions and tracks extra to the first including Edit The Dragon, an electro/ sample piece that in some ways sounds like one of Pump Up The Volume's origin stories. Arena II is a different version of Arena, a mid- 80s soul/ torch song that could have been huge. 

Official Colourbox World Cup Theme was a 1986 single released on the same day as Baby I Love You So. The track was recorded to coincide with the 1986 Mexico World Cup and was nearly chosen by the BBC as the theme music for their coverage. It is Martyn Young's favourite Colourbox song and came in a sleeve that had Jimmy Hill on one side and Bobby Robson on the other. England went to the 1986 World Cup, managed by Bobby Robson and Jimmy Hill was the anchor in the studio- they reached the quarter finals where they lost to two pieces of Diego Maradona audacity. 

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last Saturday's card said [blank white card]. I went into my downloads folder and selected at random the first songs that came up with those three words in the title- Blank Stare by Pye Corner Audio, White Shirt by The Charlatans and Master Card by Mogwai. 

Liz Ard suggested the deep listening trilogy/ meditation on death, Triloge de la Mort by Eliane Radigue and in a weird coincidence, Radigue died a couple of days later aged 94. Koume, the third and final part is here. RIP Eliane Radigue. 

Jase suggested, quite rightly, Going Blank Again by Ride (and that had been my second thought for the entire post but I went with my first). Ernie went for an index card related track by Khate and JC from The Vinyl Villain suggested The National's Blank Slate, The Associate's White Car in Germany and The Card Cheat by The Clash. 

Today's Oblique Strategy card reads as follows...

Towards the insignificant

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'Cease to exist/ Givin' my goodbyes/ Drive my car/ Into the ocean...'

Wave Of Mutilation (UK Surf Mix)

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'I lost you/I have found nothing/ That I did not know/ The nothing I have found/ Makes me strong/ 

Nothing

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'I liked you before/ I liked you before.../ Clutching insignificance/ Dancing with me'

Clutching Insignificance

Pixies, Julian Cope and Tim Burgess, dancing with death, finding nothing, heading towards insignificance...

Feel free to drop your own suggestions and responses into the comments box.

Snubbed Return

More from the Snub TV vaults. In 1989 Snub found On U Sound legend Bim Sherman in the studio, a rare TV appearance with Bim singing Power in 1989 (not the smash hit single The Power by Snap). Crunchy Skip McDonald, Doug Wimbish and Keith LeBlanc backing, Bonjo from African Head Charge on percussion, Sherwood at the desk and the golden vocals of Bim Sherman. 

In 1983 Singers & Players released their third album on On U, an all star reggae collective with members of Roots Radics and Dub Syndicate, Prince Far I, Mikey Dread, Ashanti Roy and on A Matter Of Time, Bim Sherman's voice. 

A Matter Of Time

In 1989 Barry Adamson was ex- Magazine and ex- Bad Seed and striking out solo with his Moss Side Story. Snub filmed on location in Moss Side, Manchester, with parts of the Moss Side Story album and some interview sections with Barry over the top. 

In non- Snub related news this weekend is The Golden Lion's 11th birthday. Joe Goddard plays at the Todmorden pub tonight and tomorrow David Holmes returns with a live set from Belfast's Deeply Armed on the running order too. Warming up Saturday before and around those two are The Flightpath Estate DJ team, all five of us in the house, with bags full of tunes and our standard attempt at sequencing them into some kind of coherent order. 

Tarantulas

I've written about the music of Pandit Pam Pam several times previously. Pandit Pam Pam is the name Eduardo Ramos uses for his music a style he describes as 'unsettling punky ambience' but it goes way beyond whatever you might think that sounds like. 

Eduardo lives in Sao Paulo, is inspired by European electronic music but is also obviously very much affected by Brazilian and south American music- those two influences combine to give his music very distinct sound and flavour. At the start of January he released a two minute track called Pause Rafraichissant, a soundscape that fades in with some ambient drones and synth FX, a very subtle and detailed track that you can listen to in two ways- you can let it wash over you as a background ambiance, a calming audio presence or really listen to it, paying attention to the small changes in pitch and tone and the static that replaces it at the end. It's at Bandcamp here. 

It has recently been carnival in Brazil, the Mardi Gras celebration that marks the beginning of Lent. Eduardo's wife Bianca and young children developed a love for an old song by Olodum, Farao Divindade Do Egito, a song about ancient Egyptian pharaohs and spirits. Eduardo took the song his family were dancing to and did an edit, turning it into 'a dark, Balearic, dubby dream'- his words and I can't find any better way to describe it. The Pandit Pam Pam Deep Into The Bowel Of A Dub is at Bandcamp here. It's an infectious and affecting listen and a bit of a groover too. 

Eduardo's on a roll at the moment- out tomorrow is a new track he's done as Pandit Pam Pam together with Darkinari, a cover of a Colourbox song, Tarantula. The Pandit Pam Pam/ Darkinari version is a treat, a deep dub bassline and wandering trumpet doing a dance, entwined and interlocked, the bassline descending, the trumpet weaving. Eduardo says that it was inspired by Andrew Weatherall, that he keeps making tracks that he'd like to have played for him, hoping for some kind of cosmic validation from the man. I think that if Andrew were alive, he'd have played Tarantula on his much missed NTS show. Find it at Bandcamp- I love it, it's highly recommended. 

There's another new one, Familinea, lined up for a March release, a six minute ambient beauty but we'll come back to that nearer the time. 

Colourbox's original version of Tarantula came out in 1982, their debut single along with Breakdown on the A- side, on 4AD. It was reworked the following year with producer Mick Glossop. Vocals on both versions were by Debian Currie who left in '83, replaced by Lorita Grahame. Tarantula is post- punk/ synthpop, drawing from their love of reggae and dub and also industrial synth music, dystopic dub disco with a numbed out vocal from Debian. It was later covered by 4AD supergroup This Mortal Coil. 

Tarantula

Colourbox went onto make a load of great records- their 1986 dub/ soul single Baby I Love You So and it's B-side Looks Like We're Shy One Horse are 80s peaks (and both much loved by Mr Weatherall), their 12" Official World Cup Theme/ Philip Glass single is a good one. Their self titled album, a 1983 mini- album and a 1985 full length one, both contain much to enjoy and in 1987 they joined forces with AR Kane for a one off  single as M/A/R/R/S, Pump Up The Volume, a seminal moment in UK sample/ dance music culture. 

Let's Go Burning Down the Road

I've posted this song before, Generations by Electric Dog House, a song I find inexplicably great, one of those songs that just hits the spot. 

Generations

Electric Dog House were a Joe Strummer one- off from his time in Los Angeles in the late 90s, a three piece band of Joe, ex- Damned drummer Rat Scabies and Seggs from The Ruts. Joe and Rat had met at a Ministry gig and then on Grosse Point Blanke and formed Electric Dog House recording a grand total of one song- Generations. It came out on an album also called Generations: A Punk Rock Look At Human Rights (Green Day, Bad Brains, some members of X and various other bands appear). The CD is front loaded- Joe, Rat and Seggs are track one and Generations also appeared as a CD single in promo form in 1997, presumably for radio stations. Electric Dog House don't even get a mention in Chris Salewicz's biography of Joe, Redemption Song, but the song did turn up on 001, a solo career retrospective from 2018. 

The song is fantastic- rattling and alive sounding, the drums and bass bouncing round the overloaded mix, Joe's guitar all blurry and fuzzy, two or three chords and a wonderful vocal, Joe singing a typically Strummer- esque opening line, 'Back in the day/ even circles were squares', and including some more very Strummer sounding imagery- radio waves, telegraph keys, demonstrations, cities, wars and buying pyjamas for your four year old girl- with a refrain that summons up visions of LA smog, sunsets and highways, 'Let's go burning down the road'. The mix is muddy in places, the insturments pile up twoadrs the end with no separation between them, and some people would have applied more production to it, smoothed it out and given it a radio friendly punch. It would be worse for it. 

The video  is perfectly apt too- Joe, Rat and Seggs in the studio, grainy home video footage, marchers, Joe's 50s car cruising the streets, his England flag with the word Irie stenciled across the St. George's cross and messages about human rights. 

Magpie Eyes

The latest release on Tici Taci is a three track EP by LCBC, the combined talents of Lloyd Jones and Bob Salmond (who record separately as The Long Champs and Mr BC). On Magpie Eyes they purloin their song title (I'm presuming) from The Loft's legendary 1985 single Up The Hill And Down The Slope (and Dave Cavanagh's Creation records biography My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize) and some influence from mid- 80s New Order- chugging rhythm, Hooky bassline and one finger synths playing off against the guitars. 

There are two remixes, one by Black Fades and one from Rude Audio. Black Fades go even further into the heart of the chug, spaced out, dubby cosmische, New Order if they'd been produced not by Stephen Hague but by Justin Robertson. 

Rude Audio take the Magpie Eyes down a South London dub route, stripping the track back to a skeletal electronic rhythm, some isolated topline melodies, whooshes, FX and the ghost of the bass. Addictive stuff. 

While we're here it seems appropriate to head back to 1985 and The Loft. Up The Hill And Down The Slope is definitive early Creation, the group's second single, released on 7" and 12". Pete Astor's lyric pleads for a run in the music industry, 'Once around the fair/ So I know' despite knowing that it'll ruin him and the band, as the guitars jangle and riff. 'Please don't say no...'

Up The Hill And Down The Slope

Atomium Monday

One of the highlights of our trip to Brussels last week was the Atomium. It was constructed for the 1958 World Trade Fair, a celebration of the Atomic Age and science generally (with a slice of the Cold War and the space race thrown in too). The Atomium is 335 feet tall, nine stainless steel spheres with connecting tubes and designed by Andre Waterkeyn, a modernist tribute to scientific progress and Belgian engineering skills- an atomic unit cell magnified 165 billion times, a feat of the post- war scientific world. 

Now we live in a world where people don't believe in vaccinations any more.

The Atomium is on the outskirts of Brussels, a train/ tram ride to the north of the city (Brussels is very well served for comprehensive, cheap and efficient public transport). It's part of a park which also includes the Heysel stadium which as anyone familiar with football in the 1980s will know has a history and tragedy of its own. 

The grounds from the World Trade Fair are still there and a few of the late 50s buildings and pavilions but the centrepiece is the Atomium, a mere 16 euros to enter. The view from the sphere at the top is impressive too. Above this there is a restaurant with space age tables and chairs. 

Inside the Atomium is just as exciting as outside- the spheres house an exhibition filled with promo material, posters, leaflets, accounts and photos from the fair and the construction of the Atomium. Over 41 million people visited Expo 58. At this time the Second World War was only thirteen years in the past, rationing had only just ended in the UK, the world was still recovering from a collective trauma, Europe as much as anywhere- the Atomium must have seemed like the future had landed right in front of them, in Belgium. 

As well as the museum some of the spheres are home to an installation of sound and light which were right up my straat. 

Yes, it would be a great place to hold a party. 

It's also ridiculously photogenic and viewed in 2026 beautifully retro- futuristic. I could have moved in and stayed for the rest of the week. 

Mondays at this blog are usually designated as Monday's Long Song. This is eight minutes of Natural Transition by Atomic Moog, a French electronic duo, from an EP released in 2022 that works as an Atomium soundtrack in both band name and sound. 

Natural Transition

Fifty Minutes Of Ambient Weatherall

A few days ago I revisited Andrew Weatherall's 2nd January 2020 show for NTS, a largely ambient and instrumental two hour mix he famously described as 'dusting the ornaments on the mantelpiece of your mind'.

It's a deeply affecting two hours that sets off with Prana Crafter's guitar ambience and goes deep into the psychic world of sound with a perfectly selected and sequenced set with tracks from Vito Ricci, G.S. Schray, Machete Savane, Anu Luz, Luke Sanger, Karen Gwyer, Neptune, Stephen Legget, Ana Bogner, Constantine and Christos Sakerillaridis, Felsmann and Tiley, Dream Diary, Terry Riley and Don Cherry, Ryan Teague, D.A.R.F.D.H.S., Luca Bacchetti, and Darryl Parsons. The list of artists alone indicates the range and scope of the man's musical knowledge and crate digging. Sonic adventuring leading to catharsis. 

Andrew Weatherall NTS 2nd January 2020

Andrew didn't create a huge amount of ambient music but it's definitely there throughout his back catalogue, one of the many strands that made him. When you listen to the ambient tracks from his Sabres Of Paradise or two Lone Swordsmen days and then play some from later on, the solo and Woodleigh Research Facility years, there's a striking coherence, the drones and synth sounds all fitting together into one larger whole. At least, that's the way it seemed to me when I put some of them together in a fifty minute mix. It's not entirely ambient- Andrew was never far away from a drum machine or drum sample- but it's an ambient inspired mix for Sunday. 

Fifty Minutes Of Ambient- ish Andrew Weatherall

• Two Lone Swordsmen: The Crescents
• Andrew Weatherall and Michael Smith: The Deep Hum (At The Heart Of It All)
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Hope We Never Surface
• Two Lone Swordsmen: As Worldly Pleasures Wave Goodbye...
• Two Lone Swordsmen: It's Not The Worst I've Ever Looked... Just The Most I've Ever Cared
• Woodleigh Research Facility: Gardens Dub
• Woodleigh Research Facility: Emancipation Garage
• Woodleigh Research Facility: Alma Coogan
• The Sabres Of Paradise: Chapel Street Market 9AM

The Crescents was originally only to be found on a small circulation promo CD in a tie in deal with a Japanese clothing brand from 2003, some otherwise unreleased Weatherall and Tenniswood tracks plus the A and B- side from Hidden Library 002 (a 7" release from 2002). It was then given its first vinyl release on Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1 in 2024 and then when Rotters Golf Club put Still My World out on vinyl for Record Shop Day the same year. It's Andrew and Keith ambience and a very lovely track.

In 2013 as part of his artist in residence period at Faber and Faber Andrew collaborated with Hartlepudlian author Michael Smith on a version of Smith's novel Unreal City (a novel about modern life, art, commerce and London). Andrew and Nina Walsh put together a seven track soundtrack to accompany a new edition of the book with Andrew's annotations in the margins, a CD of the soundtrack and a 10" single. Andrew and Nina's ringing drones and Smith's East Yorkshire accent are made for each other. If you'd like to hear the whole Unreal City, you can find it at my Mixcloud where Michael popped in with a link to an article he'd written about making it. 

1998's Stay Down seemed like a slightly subdued Two Lone Swordsmen album on release, twelve short pieces of sub- aquatic, downtempo, somewhere between ambient and underwater techno. It's grown over the years and has become my favorite TLS album, a full piece that has its own sound, ebb and flow, perfectly captured by its pair of deep sea divers on the cover. It's bookend by Hope We Never Surface and the lilting, gorgeous As Worldly Pleasures Wave Goodbye... (the latter is as good as any ambient electronic music made by anyone in the 90s, ambient music with dolphin chatter). A languid, strange and atmospheric album. 

It's Not The Worst I've Ever Looked... Just the Most I've Ever Cared was on side six of 2000's Tiny Reminders, a three disc record that goes deep into bass, purism and experimentation. It's Not The Worst.. was the album's outlier, a three minute moment of calm, an acoustic guitar riff loop, some gentle synth sounds, a dusty rhythm, and acres of space.

Woodleigh Research Facility began life in Crystal Palace in 2015, Weatherall and Walsh recording in Youth's garden shed. The first results were an album, The Phoenix Suburb (And Other Stories), a double vinyl album in 2015 with Emancipation Garage the most ambient sounding track on the record. At some point in 2015 they sent Gardens Dub out to everyone who'd ordered the Moine Dubh series of 7" singles as an apology for the non- appearance of one of the singles- pressing plant problems I think. 

Alma Coogan is an unreleased WRF track- it's on Youtube, a twelve minute ambient excursion which was done as part of the Faber residency. Andrew had worked again with Michael Smith to produce three tracks/ video poems about the English coast. In 2018 at Festival No. 6 WRF performed Alma Coogan as part of Andrew's Psychedelic Faber Social. WRF performed Alma Coogan live at a Durham literary festival where Andrew was a judge on the Gordon Burn Prize. Burn wrote Alma Coogan, a 1991 novel reprinted in 2004, set in an alternate world where Alma did not die of cancer in 1966 but lived to recount various seedy and unpleasant experiences in the entertainment industry, all based on real events, with the imagined Alma narrating the novel from retirement by the sea in 1986. 

Sabres Of Paradise's second album Haunted Dancehall came out in 1994, a double disc masterpiece that followed the adventures of one Nicky Maguire. Side four concludes things in largely ambient style with Maguire at dawn in London as the city wakes up, first on Jacob Street and then at Chapel Street Market. The second of these is an Sabres at their ambient best, seagulls and wobbling synth sounds, Weatherall, Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns following Maguire through the streets, just a few steps behind. 

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last Saturday's card said this- Cluster Analysis. And in response to the card I posted a track by West German group Cluster, 1976's Zum Wohl. What else could I do? Walter agreed- the band Cluster was is first response too but then said this- 

My second thought reminded me that cluster analysis was a significant part of my profession. In terms of music, every mixtape and every playlist is a cluster of this kind—depending on the underlying intention. I opened a playlist in Spotify. The cluster was the release date of the songs. Coincidentally, 'Ndrangheta Allotment by Meatraffle was at the top of the list.

'Ndrangheta Allotment

When I turned over today's card I got this...

[blank white card]

To which I spluttered a sort of half laugh. The process of writing a blog is often to start with a blank white page and to see where it goes. Often I have a clear idea of what a post is going to be about. There's a notebook next to the computer in which I keep a list of songs/ artists/ topics to write about. It gets added to endlessly and items are crossed out as they get covered. When the pages become a mess of crossings out and scribbles I turn over and start a new page, transferring anything from the old page not yet covered onto the new one. 

Often a post comes together which isn't on the list so the list is a memory jogger and bank of intentions and ideas. And sometimes, I click on New Post on the dashboard and see what happens. But [blank white card] is more or less the starting point so on this occasion I'm not sure Eno and Schmidt's Oblique Strategy did very much in terms of firing the creative process. 

I put the three words into the downloads folder search box and went for the first return in each case. 

Blank

Blank Stare

Pye Corner Audio from 2024- noise and fear, a synth drone underneath just about audible, hammer on metal- then at two minutes a synth chord emerges sounding like the most distorted guitar in the world, changing slightly and just when you're about to give up, the noise almost too much a little musical refrain appears and gradually- very gradually- comes to the fore. The sound of the last song being when the universe collapses. 

White

White Shirt

A total change of sound- White Shirt is from Some Friendly, The Charlatans debut album, released in October 1990. Rob Collins' Hammond organ is the key instrument, that wheezy sound swirling and leading. Tim Burgess said the song was mainly inspired by Felt and also an attempt to shift Collins away from Deep Purple and The Beatles. 'When my white shirt lets me down', Tim sings, 'Like one we race against the wind'. 

Card

Master Card

From Mogwai's 2014 album Rave Tapes, an album that has been overshadowed by ones they've made since- I'd always go to 2025's The Bad Fire, 2021's As The Love Continues, 2017's Every Country's Sun or 2016's soundtrack Atomic before putting Rave Tapes on. Guitars raging, a staccato riff, keys, pounding drums- Master Card is a sound hewn from granite. 

Each of these three artists has been on these pages multiple times- maybe that was what Eno's card was hinting at, doing something completely different. 

Feel free to play along and suggest your own Oblique Saturday responses in the comments box. 

Snubbed Again

Another dip back into the world of late 80s alternative culture as filtered through the lens of Snub TV, an early evening independent music show of the kind that seems inconceivable now. In December 1988 The House Of Love were filmed playing live at Top Rank in Brighton- the seven minute clip opens with a ferocious take on Destroy the Heart, Terry Bickers' guitar and Guy Chadwick's vocals in some kind of war to be the most ragged and fraught. Bickers was a really talented guitarist, capable of slow burning shimmer and understated pyrotechnics. The clip then has an interview with a fresh faced Chadwick. The rest of the band look like they'd rather be anywhere else. Snub then cut back to the gig with Man To Child. 

I loved The House Of Love, saw them live several times in the late 80s including one occasion at the Queen's Hall in Widnes just a few days before they kicked Terry out of the band, abandoning him at a service station as they were driving to Wales. Relations were fraught and Terry called Guy a breadhead and set fire to a £5 note and then drummer Pete Evans punched Terry in the face- I might be misremembering the details but it was along those lines. The first album, released on Creation in 1988, was possibly the last gasp of this kind of indie guitar music before acid house and indie dance came along the following year. 

Road

Throwing Muses were on Snub in 1988, filmed live at The Town And Country Club in Camden in May. There's a brief interview section at the start of this clip, step- sisters Kristin Hersh and Tanya Donelly, facing the questions and Kristin talking about feminism. The clip then goes to the gig, an intense performance of Downtown (a song from their 1988 album House Tornado). They were a powerful live band- they'd been going since 1981 so by '88 they were pretty seasoned performers. 

Manic Depression is a cover of The Jimi Hendrix Experience song. This is a live instrumental version, no vocals- I've no idea where or when it's from but a version of the song was on 1992's Firepile EP. 

Manic Depression

Do The Right Thing

Some more new electronic music for your enjoyment, from Mighty Force, from Paisley Dark and from Duncan Gray. I sometimes feel that writing about instrumental, electronic music leads to a certain amount of repetitive description, words like chug, synth, bass, cosmic, dark, dub and acidic re- arranged in various permutations. Needless to say, they don't always do the music justice. 

J- Lower (Jeff Lowes) records for Mighty Force. His latest album, Quanta, came out two weeks ago, an eleven track tour de force built on warm, soft drum pads, thick bass and light, ascending melody lines. Opening track Hive sets the scene, a track that builds into something that soars and lifts. The eight minute wonder Astral Awakenings has the same warm synth and drum sounds, a gently prodding rhythm and insistent melodies. You can play the whole thing from start to finish or drop in on any of the eleven tracks and find something to warm the heart and stimulate the mind. Get Quanta at Bandcamp. 

At Paisley Dark the latest EP comes via label boss John Paynter and co- producer Ben Lewis' A Space Age Freak Out complete with a full line up of remixes- Airsine, Cosmikuro, Hogt I Tak, Ben Hunt, Isis Moray, Keith Forrester, Plastic GRN, The Machine Soul and Viper Patrol are all present and correct. 

The original track is Song Of Siraba, a six minute dark disco outing that thumps along, high grade acidic chug. Airsine strips it down and slows it down, a slow burning acid churn. Cosmikuro follows suit, faint hint of ghostly backing vocals and increasingly chunky bassline coming to the fore. Keith Forrester speeds it up, strobe light, high tempo. Viper Patrol go metallic chug, lasers and widescreen sci fi. Isis Moray turn up the distortion and overload the limiters. Find those remixes and the others, all eleven versions, at Paisley Dark's Bandcamp. 

After Mighty Force in Exeter and Paisley Dark in Leeds we head to Slough where Duncan Gray is firmly back in the driving seat and releasing monthly tracks from his stockpile of recordings. In December he gave us Microfreaking, a seven minute throbber with synth and bass battling it out. January saw the release of Somebody Is Missing, a bassline and melodica heads down, slo mo, four four tribute to the departed, with a bass that never lets up- wonderful dubbed out disco. Right at the end of January Duncan dropped Do The Wrong Thing, a leftfield, off kilter delight that nods to Bowie and Iggy in West Berlin, Andrew Weatherall's Scrutton Street bunker and the never- ending thud of the four four kick drum. The wrong thing is most definitely the right thing. 

To Brussels With Love

We're off to Brussels today, an early morning flight to the Belgian capital for a half term break, three days and two nights. We haven't been to Brussels before but it looks like it has plenty to offer- preliminary research indicates no fewer than nineteen record shops as well as plenty of establishments serving Belgian beer and frites. Waffles. The Atomium. The European parliament. Lots of Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Modernist architecture and design to gaze at as well as art galleries and museums. 

Also, some very local and musical connections. Brussels is the home of Factory Benelux and Le Disques Du Crepuscule, and the latter still operates out of the city re- issuing Factory albums. LDDC was set up in 1980 by Michel Duval and Annik Honore with James Nice taking over the running of the label more recently (James is the author of Shadowplayers, the definitive Factory biography). 

In 1979 Le Disques Du Crepuscule released a cassette titled From Brussels With Love, a deluxe tape package in a plastic wallet with twenty one tracks including several by Factory artists- The Durutti Column, ACR, The Names and Martin Hannett- along with Brian Eno (an interview), Harold Budd, John Foxx, Michael Nyman and more. 

The Durutti Column were on From Brussels With Love twice, Sleep Will Come and Piece For An Ideal. The second of those is just two minutes long, Vini's guitar ringing out loud and clear with piano and some percussion. 

Piece For An Ideal

Factory's association with Brussels was pretty deep and Factory acts often played in the city, usually at Plan K, a five story arts venue in a former sugar refinery on, appropriately enough, Rue de Manchester. In 1979 Joy Division played there with Cabaret Voltaire and William Burroughs. Burroughs headlined- Ian Curtis approached Burroughs, a hero of his, for a chat. Burroughs told him to fuck off. Ian was suitably chastened apparently. 

On 13th August 1981 Durutti Column were recorded playing live in Brussels, a gig which included Vini's song For Belgian Friends, one of my favourite DC songs. It was included on last year's expanded and remastered Return Of  The Durutti Column re- issue, along with Conduct, Self- Portrait and Sketch For Summer. You can hear all those at Bandcamp and the live version of For Belgian Friends is here. 

In 1983 The Durutti Column were filmed playing For Belgian Friends live in Madrid, Vini and Bruce Mitchell in sparkling form. 

In 2020 Aficionado, the Manchester based, Balearica/ anything goes label, released a four track EP with a cover of For Belgian Friends by Dream Lovers as one of the quartet of songs, a sleepy, entrancing cover of the song that is worthy of standing alongside Vini's original. 

A Full Tank Of Gas, Brand New Tyres And A Hundred Years 'Til The License Expires

Remembering Mr. Andrew Weatherall who died on this day six years ago and whose music, art, outlook and style affected my world so much: the remixes that began for me with the purchase of Loaded in February 1990 and the Weatherall/ Oakenfold Club Mix of Hallelujah by Happy Mondays a month or two earlier and then went on from there, the words Andy Weatherall Remix in brackets after a song being a guarantee in those early years of something you definitely hadn't heard before, even when you hadn't heard of the artist he was remixing; the music he made and produced first in Sabres Of Paradise and then Two Lone Swordsmen and solo; DJ sets at various venues around the north west of England; the  perfectly selected compilation albums, Nine O'Clock Drop, Hyper City Force Tracks, Sci Fi Lo Fi, Watch The Ride; the interviews in the music press and magazines with opinions and arcane references, tales and stories, and  of what's hot and what's not; the hour long mixes given to websites; the radio shows for the BBC and NTS with scores of artists and records to chase and tasters of forthcoming Weatherall related releases; the labels he created, Sabres Of Paradise, Emissions, Moine Dubh, Bird Scarer, with those handwritten press releases and lovingly designed artwork; the year he spent as Faber's artist in residence; the advice and references, signs and symbols, he dropped throughout what he was determined to avoid calling a career.

This is thirty minutes of music Andrew made circa 2007 (unbelievably, nearly twenty years ago now), the Two Lone Swordsmen live rock 'n' roll/ garage band, Weatherall at the microphone, solo album part of his inspired and wayward musical life, ably abetted by a cast of musicians including Keith Tenniswood, Chris Rotter, Tim Fairplay, Subway Lung, Nick Burton, Nina Walsh, Julian Wright, Steve Boardman and Gordon Mills, all of whom appeared at different times on Two Lone Swordsman's Wrong Meeting pair of albums and Andrew's Pox On The Pioneers.

Half An Hour Of Andrew Weatherall Circa 2007

• Two Lone Swordsmen: Get Out Of My Kingdom
• X- Press 2: Witchi Tai To (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• Andrew Weatherall: Privately Electrified
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Patient Saints
• Villalobos: Dexter (Two Lone Swordsmen Remix)
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Glories Yesterday

Monday's Long Song

This is new on the Group Mind label, Richard Norris' home for deep listening and ambient music. Deep Earth Network's Land album is just two long tracks, twenty two minutes each (one on each side of very green vinyl that arrived through the letter boxes of Norris subscribers last week). The cover art is nicely retro- futuristic, a triangle and an eye inside it, reminiscent of a 1960s Penguin paperback. 

Land starts off with one of those voices from 1950s BBC radio, a man saying, 'there's nothing to do now but wait for nature to perform its miracle in its own good time'. Bells and chimes drift in. The sound of water running down a rockface. Another voice, birds, some percussion. A drone and whistling. A woman's voice mentioning the landscape. More chirruping. A church bell with a deep drone underneath. Harps and hiss, more water, found sounds, more voices, the drones grow stronger, bagpipes (maybe), musical boxes and chimes, keys, a church organ perhaps. It's a gentle, ambient psychedelic trip, in a place where pastoral and cosmic come together, a cousin of The KLF's Chill Out but out in the wild on its own too. 

D.E.N. (Deep Earth Network) is Danny Hammond. You can listen to Land 1 at Bandcamp. Land 2 arrives in early March. 

Forty Minutes Of Music For Sunday

Today's mix is just some music that seemed to fall together well. I was rediscovering some tunes from five years ago, some of them by ambient/ Balearic duo Seahawks*, and started weaving them and some much more recent tracks into one piece. No theme, just some music, mainly ambient or in the ambient area, I like and that strikes a chord with me right now. 

Forty Minutes Of Music For February 2026

• Seahawks: Islands
• Kevin McCormick: Passing Clouds
• Hawksmoor: Storm Bird- Storm Dreamer
• Le Carousel: Echo Spiegel (Psychedelic Mix)
• Private Agenda: Malanai Ascending (Seahawks Remix)
• Thurston Moore: Asperitas
• Boards Of Canada: Olson Version 3 (Peel Session)
• Olodum: Farao Divindade Do Ogito (Pandit Pam Pam Deep Into The Bowel Of A Dub)
• Maria Somerville: October Moon

Islands is from Seahawks 2014 album Paradise Freaks, a beautiful piece of music that comes in at under two minutes long but which says and suggests so much in that time. It's the final track on Paradise Freaks, a short closer after an hour of longer tracks that seems to sum the whole album up. 

Kevin McCormick is a guitarist from Manchester, who should be better known than he is, whose early 80s recordings were recently re- issued and who plays on the 12" from Arrival that came out on Before I Die last month, a highly recommended release. Passing Clouds is from October 2024, a guitar meditation on sky watching.

Hawksmoor's Am I Conscious Now? will be out on Before I Die soon and is going to be one of the best ambient releases of 2026. Last year a two track EP called Life Aboard The International Space Station came out, reprising two unreleased tracks from 2021- one of them was this one, named after a JG Ballard short story. Storm Bird- Storm Dreamer is several guitars, acoustic and electric, playing together.  

Le Carousel is Phil Kieran from Belfast. Next month he's going to release one of 2026's best post- Weatherall/ electronic albums, The Humans Will Destroy Us. Last year's WE're All Gonna Hurt was a big tune round Bagging Area way and Echo Spiegel came out right at the end of last year. Phil's own Psychedelic Mix is an ambient/ psychedelic journey, four minutes of beatless, floaty, slightly trippy synths that spin further and further with each passing bar.

Private Agenda are a duo split between London and Amsterdam. Their six track mini- album Submersion came out in May 2021- remixes of material from their Ilse de Reve album. Seahawks created something spectacularly otherwordly with their remix of Malanai Ascending. Malanai it turns out is a gently cooling breeze found in coastal parts of Hawaii which makes perfect sense when you listen to the music. 

Thurston Moore's Asperitas came out last Monday, a ten minute guitar instrumental with drum machine taken from a six track album of instrumentals based on the skies as seen in England, wales and Ireland. All six tracks are named after types of cloud. Asperitas is a total joy, thudding primitive drum machine and Thurston's chilled, repetitive and evocative guitar parts. 

Now I'm looking at the tracks I've chosen for this mix and wondering if there is a theme after all, one I wasn't even aware of as I was pulling the tracks together- islands, clouds, skies, storms, breezes... 

I've been on a Boards Of Canada binge recently and their Peel Session, released by Warp in 2019 but recorded for Peel back in 1999, has been on repeat. Olson is one of four tracks from the session, the one that made the most sense in this mix.

My friend in Sao Paulo Eduardo records as Pandit Pam Pam and has been featured at this blog several times. Last month he sent me two new tracks, one out at the end of the month and also this one, an edit of a song celebrating the Pharaohs and deities of ancient Egypt. Eduardo said his wife was listening to it and his kids loved it too and it drew him in, and with carnival approaching he did a new version, something dark, danceable and dubby. Mardi Gras is on Tuesday next week, 17th February, and the carnival started over this weekend- it seemed apt to put it into this mix.

Maria Somerville's album Luster came out last year and I slept on it a bit, not really appreciating it, or just giving it enough time, until recently. It's an album inspired by the mythic and the real, the wild coastal landscape of Connemara, Ireland, a mystical swirling record that blurs ambient, early 80s 4AD and dreampop. Another subliminal nature nature- how strange that this only became apparent after pulling the tracks together and I began writing about them.

* Maybe this was subliminal influence from the Superbowl, not a sporting event I take any interest in, but Seattle Seahawks were in the Superbowl- the final I think we call it in most other sports- and they beat the New England Patriots 29- 13. I didn't know that until I looked it up. The main interest in the Superbowl from my end over here was that trump didn't go 'because it was too far away', and the half time entertainment was by Bad Bunny who sang entirely in Spanish (he's from Puerta Rico) and this was widely viewed as an anti- Trump, anti- MAGA performance especially when he announced 'I love America' and began listing countries from South, Central and North America while his dancers carried their flags. Trump predictably said that it was, 'absolutely terrible, one of the worst EVER!' and added 'no one understands a word this guy is saying'. Trump is a cunt.

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's card read this- Imagine the piece as a series of disconnected events- and I plundered my music folders for random songs about events by unconnected artists- Simon and Garfunkel, Gram Parsons, Captain Beefheart, Broken Chanter and Echo Ladies. My friend Chris suggested Ultra Vivid Scene's Not In Love (Hit By A Truck), a list of disconnected and unexperienced events narrated by singer Kurt Ralske over a pleasingly shambolic lo fi Velvets guitar noise. 

Today's card was much more straightforward and could only be read one way. It said this...

Cluster Analysis

Cluster's Sowiesoso came out in 1976, the group reduced to just Roedelius and Moebius and the duo's relocation to Forst in rural West Germany. Sowiesoso has none of the driving motorik of Neu! or the energy of Can or the beatnik lunacy of Faust. It is almost ambient, pastoral music made in response to their surroundings, mixed by the legendary Conny Plank. Slow paced and gentle with odd quirks, it is a post- Eno album- as in it is influenced by his pioneering 70s ambient albums and post their own work with him on previous Cluster albums. It reflects some kind of peace and tranquility gained from rural living- green fields, trees and forests, birdsong, nature's calm...

Zum Wohl

Electric piano chords, birdsong, rising chords, the sun slowly rising over Forst, Baden- Württemberg. 

Feel free to drop your own responses to Cluster Analysis in the comments box. 

Tears, Tech, Loneliness

Last month I wrote about two new songs from Halifax born/ Manchester based trio The Orielles, a single ahead of their forthcoming album Only You Left, an album that ties up all their loose ends and creativity at the end of a self proclaimed seven year cycle. You Are Eating A Part Of Yourself/ To Undo The World Itself were both really impressive, blurry, shape shifting guitars riffs and FX and poetic/ expressive lyrics uttered on top. It felt like something significant was being communicated, a point arrived at. 

This week's new song, Tears Are, is even better. Those guitars are back, played through some lovely amps, drums kicking away and singer Esme giving another cool vocal, free form and ambiguous. Esme said the lyrics were partly about 'imagery of wood versus metal' and how 'everything fell naturally into either category'. The song collapses into an acoustic guitar coda, circling notes and whispers. A mid- February treat and one that suggests the album, when it comes next month, will be one well worth paying attention to. 

Also out this week is a new song from Anna Calvi sharing vocals with Mr. Iggy Pop. Iggy sang with The Moonlandingz last year, a song that was one of my favourites of 2025. He's repeats the trick here with Iggy showing no signs of letting go and Anna's getting the best out of him and herself. Iggy, once 'the world's forgotten boy' is now God's Lonely Man... thumping drums, a thunderous rhythm that calls classic mid- 70s Iggy to mind, Anna more than a match vocally and some wailing guitar to punctuate the two minutes forty nine seconds the song sticks around for. 

Kim Gordon's solo career continues, a post- Sonic Youth adventure that is more experimental and more adventurous than many people half her age. On Dirty Tech she half sings/ half speaks over low fi electro and skittering drums. It's so electric and vibrant it could probably wipe tape clean at close quarters and scare wild animals. Kim Gordon is 72. 

Union Versions

Marconi Union are an ambient/ electronic trio from Manchester with a dozen albums behind them dating back to 2003 and most recent one in the middle of 2025, The Fear Of Never Landing. Last month a remix EP of three tracks from the album came out, remixes of Marconi Union by Pye Corner Audio and Carbon Based Lifeforms plus a new version by MU themselves. 

Carbon Based Lifeforms remix of Eight Miles High Alone takes a synth arpeggio and builds around it, a slowly simmering, uplifting version of the track with vocal sighs, synth whooshes and a voice fading in and out. It's an electronic dream, the sort of track that has been made using machines but could only have been created by humans, full of moments and pauses, pulsing synths and atmospheres. Life affirming sounds that seem to celebrate just the act of existing. 

Pye Corner Audio, a regular on these pages, remixed In Motion- a deep synth chord intro, some topline notes that dance about and then the thud of a kickdrum and FXed choral sounds and we're off into rhythmic, analogue rave territory. Forward momentum. Walls of synths. A little drama. 

If those two aren't enough- and getting past them is a job, each track begs you to replay it as soon as it fades out- there's a remix of Cloudsurfing by Marconi Union, a reinterpretation that sends the original down a synth pulse tunnel, the sort of track that plays with montages of futuristic cityscapes, speeding 22nd century vehicles flying through seventy mile long underpasses beneath the sea, Marconi Union filtered through a Detroit retro- futurism. 

Three pieces of vivid, emotive and hypnotic electronic gold. TFONLEPRMX can be found at Bandcamp. Highly recommended. 

Forget About Love

Something new from the creative wellspring that is Todmorden, a double A- side single from Lily Rae Grant. On Poison Ivy Lily's voice and guitar are the focus, close to the mic. There's a violin in the background and some production space between all three. The song is slow and sumptuous, a little bit indie, a little bit country, a lot of heart. Lily Rae Grant is just eighteen years old and already sounds like she's got decades of songwriting and recording years behind her. 

The other side of the single is even better, a song called Forget About, six minutes long and with a fuller sound, keys playing a twinkly, descending melody, some organ chords and drums, a cosmic soul/ dusty indie vibe- or dusty soul/ cosmic indie maybe, switch the words around however you like, and I'll throw in spacious and dreamy in too. The production is spot on, restrained but hinting at expansiveness, Lily's voice sinking into the track and then floating on top. 

The single came out on 7" in January. There may be some copies left somewhere- Piccadilly Records had some a few days ago but it looks like they're all gone now, unsurprisingly really, Lily's been on 6 Music recently and the always excellent Plain Or Pan wrote a post a couple of days ago. If you can't find the vinyl, you can get the digital at Bandcamp. 

Dawn Chorus

As noted on Saturday I've somehow manged to go over fifteen years of daily blogging without ever really writing about Boards Of Canada (apart from a mention in a post about a remix EP of The Sexual Objects back in 2018), a mystery to me really because in the period from the mid- to- late 90s to the mid 00s they made some startling and wonderful electronic music and two albums- 1998's Music Has The Right To Children and 2002's Geogaddi and two EPs, In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country from 2000 and Trans Canada Highway from 2006- that are among the best from that time and since. 

Boards Of Canada were two brothers, Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin (Sandison) born in Scotland and for a period in their childhood they lived in Calgary, Canada. The family returned to Scotland and both went to Edinburgh University. They made music from a young age, playing with tape recorders and found sounds from their early teens, layering their own samples recorded from short wave radio over of music they made. In 1986 they formed a band, Boards Of Canada, and released small quantity recordings among friends. In 1996 they sent a tape to Skam and signed to the label and then in 1998 released Music Has The Right To Children jointly with Skam and Warp. 

Music Has The Right To Children is a fully realised album, short pieces and longer tracks, made using tape to tape experiments, loops, analogue synths, drum machines, some super slowed down hip hop drums, samples from North American 1970s television, found sounds, the blurred guitar sound feel of My Bloody Valentine and some weird 90s nostalgia for a 70s childhood. It's futuristic and modern but aching for a past that maybe never existed- a feel that has become known as Hauntology. The vocal samples all seem to mean something but it's not obvious or evident where the answers are. 

By 2002 the brothers had recorded a follow up, the twenty two song Geogaddi. It was a darker, more ominous record, paranoia and mistrust added to the mellower sounds of the first album. This was partly a response to the geopolitical world of the early years of the 21st century- the 9/11 attacks and subsequent war on terror. Geogaddi like it's predecessor has short, one minute tracks, often just loops and samples that buzz into life for a minute or two, and longer ones that unfold at their own pace, never quite conforming to expectations. It's a wonderful album, one that works best taken in one sitting. Among its highlights is Dawn Chorus-

Dawn Chorus

Circling loops of off kilter sounds, slo mo drums, woozy synths and 70s kids TV melodies, some voices and vocal sounds- at times Dawn Chorus seems to be three or four different songs playing at once, each one slipping slightly out of time. It's magical and a little unsettling, like the solar flare you get when you accidentally stare at the sun on a summer's day, the grass all bleached, and the sense that time is getting on a bit, the day is running away with you. 

Monday's Long Song

Thurston Moore's latest solo work came out on Friday, a six track album released onto Bandcamp called Guitar Explorations Of Cloud Formations. All six tracks are long, clocking in between eight minutes and ten and a half. They were inspired by the skies and clouds of the British Isles, as seen by Thurston and his partner Eva Marie in England, Wales and Ireland. Thurston sketched the instrumental tracks out in 2025 backed by a drum machine ahead of a live performance in Dublin. There is plenty of noise in the six tracks especially the first three, but the last three are instrumental and experimental guitar at its best, meditative and absorbing, repetition as an artform. 

On the final track, Asperitas, nine minutes and forty seconds long, the drum machine kicks into life and Thurston's guitars play some lovely melody lines,  melody lines countered by backwards shimmers, single notes rippling out as slow bursts of fuzz and feedback glide in and out. Asperitas clouds are rough and wavy, looking like a rough sea in the sky. Apparently, despite appearing ominous, they always dissipate without a storm forming. 

Thurston's guitar playing ripples and flows, notes rising and falling as the drum machine keeps thudding away. It's a joy of a track, one to put on while you lose yourself in something or just sit staring into space- you can listen here. 

The previous one, Cirrus, is rather good too, a Velvets style riff repeated endlessly while two or three other guitar lines entwine themselves around it for ten minutes. 

Forty Minutes Of January And February Songs

A month ago I had the idea that at the end of January I'd put together a January mix, songs with January in the title or lyrics, and then maybe repeat throughout the rest of the months of the year. For one reason and another it didn't happen and now it's February. No problem, I thought, I'll just roll January and February together, and do that. It turns out I have not very many January songs and even fewer February ones- the only February songs I could find were Lou Reed's Xmas In February and Billy Bragg's 14th Of February and neither really fitted with the vibe I started the mix with. I extended February's reach into Valentine's Day and that, no surprise, made it much easier. All of which is a long winded way of saying here's a forty minute mix of songs about January and February. 

Forty Minutes Of January And February Songs

• The Orb: Perpetual Dawn (January Mix 3)
• M- Paths: January Song
• The Durutti Column: Requiem For A Father
• My Bloody Valentine: Soon
• Lizzy Mercier Descloux: My Funny Valentine
• Charlotte Gainsbourg: Deadly Valentine
• New Order: 1963
• Half Man Half Biscuit: Epiphany (Peel Session)

Perpetual Dawn is an Orb classic, remixed twice by Andrew Weatherall in fine style. For their album Aubrey Mixes: The Ultraworld Excursions, released and deleted on the same day in 1991 The Orb remixed songs from Beyond The Ultraworld, finding new shapes and sounds for seven essential early Orb tracks including the January Mix 3 version of Perpetual Dawn- early 90s ambient house at its best.

M- Paths release ambient/ electronic music, sometimes for Mighty Force and sometimes on their own label. Now down to the core figure of Marcus Farley, who also records as Reverb Delay, this track came out a year ago, at the start of January 2025, an archival M- Paths recording for the new year.

Tony Wilson, TV presenter and founder of Factory Records, was also from 1978 the manager and friend of Vini Reilly. When the original band version of The Durutti Column split in 1978 Wilson decided that the future for Durutti was Vini Reilly and whoever else was around but that Reilly was such a talent that he should make Durutti Column his own. Wilson also decided that he would put all Durutti Column records out on Factory and that he would manage DC/ Vini along with fellow Factory founder Alan Erasmus. Wilson formed a management company on the 24th January 1978 and called it The Movement Of The 24th January, borrowing the name from the Situationist students who formed their own International Movement on 22nd March at Nanterre University 1968 (Mouvement 22 du Mars). Here is a copy of the letterhead Wilson designed for his company...

Requiem For A Father is from The Return Of The Durutti Column, the debut album released in January 1980, Vini's guitar playing and Martin Hannett's echo and delay devices and synths in perfect harmony, Vini playing a song for his Dad and Hannett making a rhythm out of a digital machine that sounds like a cat purring close up. 

My Bloody Valentine have been never very far away this year to date, their songs soundtracking much of January 2026. Soon is from Loveless in 1991, a track that did things with guitars that genuinely hadn't really been done before. Kevin Shields' guitars following Vini Reilly's is exactly where my head is at right now. 

Valentine's Day is less than a week away lovebirds. 

Lizzy Mercier Descloux was a French punk, friends with Patti Smith and Richard Hell, published Rock News and moved to New York where she set up ZE records with her partner Michael Esteban. Lizzy released several albums, minimalist punk/ No Wave, wrote poetry and painted, retired to Corsica to write books and lived a full and varied life. She died in 2004. Her cover of My Funny Valentine, the Hart and Rogers song, is from her 1986 album One For The Soul which had Chet Baker guesting on some of the tracks including this one. 

Sticking with French artists, Charlotte Gainsbourg released Rest in 2017, her fifth solo album and one that dealt with the death of her father Serge and alcohol addiction. Deadly Valentine was a single and is dramatic synth pop with a lively throbbing bassline and feathery vocals.

1963 is from the B-side to 1987's New Order single True Faith, a giant in their back catalogue. 1963 could have been a single in its own right. Bernard's lyrics are peculiar/ awful (delete according to taste). 'It was January/ 1963/ When Johnny came home with a gift for me'. Bernard once spun a line that the song was about JFK and Marilyn Monroe arranging for Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot Jackie Kennedy so they could get together but Oswald shooting the wrong person. Bernard may not have been entirely serious- Marilyn died in 1962 so at the very least his chronology's off. Producer Stephen Hague thought it was about domestic abuse. Whatever the lyrics deal with, the music is New Order 1987 magnificence.

Half Man Half Biscuit recorded Epiphany for a Peel Session. It starts out with Nigel Blackwell narrating a chance occurrence on a Friday in July that then unfolds in surreal Blackwell style taking in Dictionary Corner, black apes gibbering on dark lawns, a lime Dyson, a date in Parbold (near Wigan), a crossed telephone line, a sickly foal, a straggle haired girl called Karen Henderson, songs recorded for a a hospice, bus outings, Billing Aquadrome and busking at Embankment Tube before concluding 'January the 6th. Epiphany'.