What If No One's Calling?

Over at The Vinyl Villain JC spent September counting down 800 songs that span the parameters of the blog and his musical world. Near to the business end of things was a song by Echo And The Bunnymen, a band who were a formative Vinyl Villain influence. The song was Heads Will Roll, from 1983's Porcupine. It was a choice that made me smile- out of all the songs from the classic four man line up, from Crocodiles to Ocean Rain, all those songs and moments, all those singles, JC went for a Porcupine album track. 

I spent some time going back to Porcupine and Heads Will Roll. The album was described by those involved in making it as 'horrible'. They'd been on tour and hadn't had time to write new songs. The songs they were writing didn't flow as easily as the Heaven Up Here songs. Mac doesn't like singing the Porcupine songs, as he feels the words are too personal, that he gave too much away. Will didn't like the record company telling him first version of the songs and the production weren't good enough and resented them having to be re- worked and re- recorded. Les didn't like the record industry full stop. Pete had been producing The Wild Swans, spent some time doing other things, and was a little isolated from the other three Bunnymen (as he often was). Not ideal conditions. That they made Porcupine at all is a miracle. 

The Cutter and The Back Of Love are songs one and two- two massive Bunnymen singles, adorned with Shankar's strings- and after that the album does become a bit heavy and self obsessed. My White Devil and Clay are both serious songs. The title track too. 

Side two opens with the drama and psychedelic post- punk of Heads Will Roll though and suddenly we're back down at the front, the band blazing and the violas and cellos linking 1967 with 1983, headspinning swirly psyche and Mac singing of 'partly politic' and 'no one calling', meetings in private places where he will 'stare you into the ground'. It's gripping and exhilarating stuff, psychedelic Bunnymen with verses and choruses. 

They recorded a longer version, the Summer Version, which eventually came out as a B- side on the post- Porcupine standalone single Never Stop, a song that broke the gloom. Lay down thy raincoat and groove. The Summer Version is longer, Will's spindly guitar at the fore and Les' bass powering everything along, before the viola comes in. It ends with Shankar's strings and Pete's drums going off on one for forty seconds,a section which could easily have been stretched out for longer. 

Heads Will Roll (Summer Version)

This clip of the Bunnymen on Dutch TV miming to Heads Will Roll demonstrates what was so great about them, the 1983 Bunnymen in all their pomp. 

The 2003 CD release of Porcupine (and the other canonical 80s albums) featured various B- sides and extras. Porcupine's extras included four previously unreleased versions from the original studio recordings, produced by Kingbird (Ian Broudie, who produced both the original and re- recorded songs for Porcupine) and before Shakar's strings were added. When you listen to them it's easy to see why Will was pissed off at them being rejected- there's nothing wrong with them, they're sparser and possibly less dynamic but still good takes. WEA/ Korova rejected them as 'too uncommercial'. I'm not sure Will was too bothered about being commercial. When they'd recorded The Back Of Love in 1982 tensions were so bad Drummond got them off to Scotland, a tour of the highlands and islands, to rebuild band relations, a tactic which didn't entirely succeed. The Porcupine sessions were tense and that can be heard in the original versions I think. Shankar's strings which added so much to The Back Of Love and The Cutter were brought back. This is the original version of the album's title track...

Porcupine (Original Version)

Ian's lyrics to the Porcupine song Higher Hell were inspired by seeing a Hieronymus Bosch painting while on tour in Madrid, Ian lost in the detail and crazy world of the 16th century Dutch painter. The lower heaven and higher hell of the song were Ian's version of Bosch's psychedelic/ religious freakout world of God, animals and monsters, birds swallowing people whole and bodies piled up after final judgement.

Higher Hell

Hieronymus Bosch appears on the new Bunnymen album Apples For Isaac, a link between the worlds of 1983 and 2026. 'What would Hieronymus say?', Ian sings in the single Brussels Is Haunted, a genuinely great late period Bunnymen song, Ian back at the top of his game, sounding good and writing lyrics that are memorable. 

It's difficult to listen to the album and hear it as a full Bunnymen album in some ways- Will only appears on a few songs and Ian has said that Will's 'weird stuff' didn't get used. It feels more like an Ian McCulloch solo album but the name Echo and The Bunnymen will get greater attention and sales. But even so, it's good, I like it. It feels weirdly personal due to the title but that's not the only reason. At least half the songs are much better than you might expect at this stage in proceedings and the fact that there's been so long between this one and the previous one (ten years) suggests Ian has worked at it, chosen his best songs, got them recorded as he wants them and not just rushed out some mediocre product. It feels like he cares. 

Clem Burke's drums give it some wallop, the guitars and synths sparkle, it sounds Bunnymen but not deliberately so, not chasing or reviving the classic sound- it's just that this is what they sound like. First song Take Me By The Hand charges in at a pace and Can't Be Sold follows, bold and confident in itself. Brussels Is Haunted is a beauty. On some of the songs Ian sounds his age, the voice a bit worn and weary- not in a bad way but in a way that works for the songs. 

An Unstoppable Force opens side two, Velvets acoustic guitars and Ian at the fore, wiser maybe, a man who knows time and tide wait for no- one. 

There are a couple more that stand up- Asimov has clipped guitar chords and some drama and The Light That Surrounds You pulls at the heartstrings. Lab Rats Ran has sax that recalls Roxy Music. Apples For Isaac ends with We Prayed In The Dark and by the time it finishes I've spent forty minutes listening to eleven new Echo And The Bunnymen songs and not wished I had Ocean Rain, Porcupine, Crocodiles or Heaven Up Here on instead. It's not any of those albums either but it's definitely, on its own terms, a minor triumph. 

Monday's Long Songs

The last two Spiritualized albums were released in 2018 and 2022, songs recorded at the same time and split over two records with titles that joined up to form a phrase courtesy of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, Everything Was Beautiful And Nothing Hurt. 

There's an argument, not least in the pair of album titles, that the sixteen songs demonstrate that Jason has finally found some inner peace and buried the demons that were on his trail for the previous three or four decades and that dominated his songwriting. The songs were worked up on Jason's laptop with Jason playing a huge range of instruments- sixteen I read somewhere- and it is incredible what can be done on a laptop. The songs are huge, fresh and vibrant, a definite addition to the Spiritualized back catalogue after a couple of previous albums that didn't do as much for me (2008's Songs In A&E and 2012's Sweet Heart Sweet Light). If ...And Nothing Hurt and Everything Was Beautiful... end up being the full stop on Spiritualized, they're a good place to finish. 

Jason's no stranger to long songs. The longest song on 2018's ...And Nothing Hurt was The Morning After which blasts off with organ drone and Johnny B. Good guitar, totally Velvet Underground too, and then Jason's slightly broken voice, 'Jane said she had a problem with the modern world/ All the boys she ever loved are in love with another girl...' 

The Morning After

There's a view on various Spritualized forums that Jane is Jason, reflecting on his own problems with the modern world. The song is a blast, nearly eight minutes of rock 'n roll as catharsis, the ending overdubbed with free jazz sax and a pile up of instruments putting Jason's laptop through its paces. 

The longest song 2022's Everything Was Beautiful... was The A Song (Laid In Your Arms), seven minutes and seven seconds of exhilarating psych/ space rock. 'These are the words, they're as old as the hills/ Cooked on a diet of mushrooms and pills/ One man's crime is another man's thrill/ And we're gone'. Some kind of acceptance there. Guitars, horns, organ, drums, all weigh in, layered and distorted and all contributing to a mass musical delirium. 'We're laid in your arms'. 

The A Song (Laid In Your Arms)

Forty Five Minutes Of Post- Factory Durutti Column

More Durutti Column- there's already quite a lot of Vini here this year, hopefully you can stick with it. There's so much to find in his back catalogue, always a track you hadn't heard or noticed properly before. 

Today's mix is a post- Factory selection. Factory folded in 1992, debts killing off a fourteen year art experiment. Tony Wilson moved on and with typical bravado launched Factory Too (Factory 2) in 1994 with The Durutti Column the first band to sign up (Wilson was Vini's friend, mentor and manager so it seemed obvious Vini would follow Tony- everyone else had gone to London Records or elsewhere because under the rules of engagement at Factory, 'the artists own everything, the label owns nothing', a beautiful artistic stance that left the label nothing to bargain with when the creditors began banging on the doors and they tried to save the label in 1991/ 2). 

Factory Too/ 2, Wilson with original Factory co- director Alan Erasmus, also signed Hopper and The Space Monkeys (I recall nothing about Hopper but The Space Monkeys play a few times including a good gig at The Boardwalk). The Durutti Column released two albums for the label before it too folded- 1994's Sex And Death and 1998's Time Was Gigantic... When We Were Kids, and one in between on Le Disques de Crepuscule, a Factory Belgian offshoot. 

After that Vini's albums came out on Kooky or Artful leading to the 2010's tribute to Tony Wilson, A Paean To Wilson. In 2012 Vini suffered a series of strokes and that was that it seemed until this year's comeback, Renascent. The eleven albums he made after 1994 and the various recordings that came out as a series of CD only albums called The Sporadic Recordings are a treasure trove of lesser known and obscure Durutti Column songs. This mix only scratches the surface.

Forty Five Minutes Of Post- Factory Durutti Column

• Or Are You Just A Technician?
• It's Wonderful
• Fidelity
• Fado
• So Many Crumbs And Monkeys!
• Longsight Romance
• Nile Reprise
• Diazepam 5mg
• Drinking Tune (Version)
• Requiem
• Fate

Or A You Just A Technician? is the opening track from 2010's Paean To Wilson, recorded for Tony after his death in 2007. The track is a minute of sound manipulation, Wilson interviewing Martin Hannett about his role as a producer, ever the provocateur. Requiem is from the same album, a long eulogy for Vini's friend.  

It's Wonderful is a glorious explosion of sound from 2006's Keep Breathing, a huge and life affriming piece of music. I saw Durutti Column at Manchester Academy, in the small room at the top of the student union, around this time playing a set of songs mainly from the 90s albums and finishing with some Stooges style raw power. It's Wonderful was superb. In the 90s and 00s we saw them play several gigs in Manchester, a couple in unusual places- one at Atlas Bar where Vini and Bruce played in the window, their backs to Deansgate and another at the Comedy Club on Deansgate Locks around 2003/ 4 where Vini made some jokes about how he should be telling jokes and played the first two songs just him, his guitar and a ghetto blaster, before the band came on and joined him. It wasn't sold out- funny how patchy attendance was a some of the Factory related stuff in the 90s and 00s. I went to an afternoon at the Cornerhouse where Wilson introduced 10 videos that made Manchester or Factory, with a Q&A after. There were about twenty people there including The Other Two (sat in front of us). Memory tells me the Comedy Store gig an afternoon gig too. 

Fidelity is from 1996's album of the same name, a John Bonham sampling tune. Both track and album are very much lost DC. Eley Rudge guests on vocals with Vini on guitar, synths, piano and samples. 

Fado is from Sex And Death, a twelve track album that was his first for four years when it came out in 1994. Vini goes all over the place on the album, a real pick and mix job, with tracks in a dozen styles. In 1991 The Durutti Column played at Factory's Cities In The Park festival in Heaton Park, partly a tribute to Hannett. It was a hot day and the line up was strong- Durutti Column, Cath Carroll, ACR, De La Soul, New FADs, Revenge, Electronic (with Pet Shop Boys appearing on Patience Of A Saint) and Happy Mondays. One of those gigs you have to pinch yourself actually happened and cost less than £20. The version of Fado we were privileged to listen to in the afternoon heat was as good as anything else we heard that day. Fado is named after the traditional Portuguese music Vini heard on tour in Lisbon, music all about sadness, loss and longing. 

So Many Crumbs and Monkeys!is from 2008's Sunlight To Blue... Blue To Blackness, an acoustic, folk sounding song with a drum machine and Vini's guitar playing a total joy. Vini sings in the second half of the song.

Longsight Romance is from 2001's Rebellion. Longsight is a mile south of Manchester city centre on the A6 towards Stockport. The song is full of delay and FX, several guitar parts, hand drums and Vini's voice. The album takes in Irish folk, a song with a rapper, various guest vocalists and a banjo.

The Sporadic recordings came out in 1990 followed by The Return Of... in 2002 and a third volume, Sporadic Three, in 2007. The CDs are full of archival recordings, demos, lost tracks, experiments, all manner of rare and unreleased songs. Nile Reprise and Daizepam 5mgs are both from The Return Of The Sporadic Recordings and Drinking Time (Version) and Fate are from Sporadic Three. All three are typically Vini- inventive, expressive, off the cuff, and melodic. According to the sleevenotes, written by Vini, Drinking Time was an offcut from Time Was Gigantic... and has 'Laurie Laptop pulling all the FX he could find on the track'. Fate is described as  a 'little Portastudio tune from around the time of Tempus Fugit' (which was released in 2004). Fate is acoustic guitar with plenty of delay, notes echoing round the mix, a blur of background sound, an electric guitar drippling notes into the foreground and Vini's soft vocals. It's a gorgeous, lilting, middle of the night kind of song, the sort of thing it seems Vini was recording almost as an afterthought. 

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 Oblique Strategy suggestion was What are you really thinking about just now?

I was thinking about various things, both trivial and more important. Musically it took me to The Charlatans. There was an inspired response from the OSS (Oblique Saturdays Squad) which included Otavio August Fernades Cardoso (Ernie), Kurt Vile and The Charlatans (Al G, and a different Charlatans song from mine), The Housemartins, Broken Chanter, Happy Mondays, The Colourfield and Hifi Sean and David McAlmont (all JC), National Trust membership (Mrs G), the England 1970 World Cup squad (Jase), The B52s (Rol), Jake Thackray (The Swede), Jonathan Dee (A Telepathic Fish) and NOZZ (Chris Zen Arcade).

W.F.L. (Think About The Future)

At the start of this series in January I thought I might pull all the songs together into a mix or series of mixes but the sheer volume of them has left me a bit overwhelmed by the prospect. An end of year job maybe. 

Anyway, this week's card is this- The tape is now the music. 

A few weeks ago a friend who's moving house sent me a message to ask if it was worth trying to sell a box of old cassettes, 'mainly 80s pop' he said, 'Springsteen, Dire Straits, that kind of thing'. I said it was, the cassette revival was very much a thing and 80s pop was probably much sought after. I recommended Fountains records in Stretford. He came back with £50 in his pocket and promised to buy me a pint to say thank you (I've not had that pint yet it occurs to me). 

The photo at the top of this post and the one below are the tapes I still own, bought at various points since the late 80s. I sometimes bought cassettes back in the day- cheaper than vinyl, portable, often contained extra tracks, some bought for car listening- many of these pictured here were owned on vinyl as well (and possibly later on on CD too). A couple are magazine freebies, one is a bootleg of Andrew Weatherall DJing at Cream bought in a clothes shop in Wigan (funny the things you remember), a couple are promos from a magazine in Manchester I contributed a few things to in the mid 90s, a handful are very recent (products of the tape revival) and there's a few C90s in there too which for sentimental reasons I've never felt able to part with. I could probably equal my friend's £50 windfall by taking many of these up the road but I think I'd miss them. I do actually still have a cassette player too but am cautious about playing them in case they get tangled and snagged. 

Some tracks from a handful of the tapes pictured.

Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards

Possibly Billy Bragg's best song, certainly one of his most loved. I adored it when it came out and it evokes the world it was released into very much- the me as an 18 year old world and the wider world of 1988.

A Million Miles

See also The Wedding Present and George Best. 

The cassette single (they tried to make the word cassingle a thing and it didn't really take off) was a cheap way of picking up extra tracks and B-sides for Walkman listening, especially if you picked them up from the bargain bin in Woolworths after they'd dropped out of the chart. The 1993 One Dove cassingle of Breakdown cost me less than a quid and has the sublime Squire Black Dove Rides Out version of Breakdown on it, ideal for listening to on the move at a time when I didn't have the facility to tape from my vinyl. Andrew Weatherall and the Sabres boys with a ten minute cinematic dub odyssey, remixing One Dove and sampling Shades Of Rhythm and Tranquility Bass to fine effect. 

Breakdown Squire Black Dove Rides Out 

Klangkollektor is from Nuremberg and releases records on Jason Boardman's Before I Die label. Thoroughly recommended. The cassette release of The Stockport Tapes captures Klangkollektor playing live in Lower Hillgate, Stockport, two summers ago. Dubby Balearica with Roland Space Echo and tweeting birds. 

Evening Post (Live In Stockport)

Rentamax 2000's Straight To Tape came out in September 2025, the sound of the future past, Tomorrow's World, dial up and the 80s tape revolution.

Polytechnic

The tape is now the music. Feel free to drop your own responses and recommendations in the comments box. 

The Girl Of Our Dreams

One of the wheels set in motion by The Sex Pistols and the birth of punk in the UK in 1976 was the appearance of regional scenes where creative people suddenly saw a route to making music in a different way and didn't feel the need to go to London to do it. Don't ask for permission, don't wait for someone to offer you a contract, just get up and do it. In Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Bristol bands began to act. Another of the wheels was the realisation by some that you didn't need to sound like The Sex Pistols, you could funnel all sorts of other influences into your DIY sound. 

This was as true in Bristol as anywhere else. The Pop Group gave themselves the most generic name they could think of (only A Pop Group could have been a little more generic), a name dripping in irony. They took their influences- punk but also jazz and free, dub, funk- and fused them with radical politics to come up with some of the most uncompromising, intense and intuitive post- punk records. 

She Is Beyond Good And Evil was their debut single, released in March 1979. Mark Stewart was a didactic and intense frontman and lyricist. The song is about love as an unconditional force, a force where according to Mark, 'idealism and energy mix poetic, existential, and political yearnings with the romantic idea of passing through nihilism and emerging on the other side with something positive, something beyond'. 

She Is Beyond Good And Evil

The Pop Group were not making pop music, certainly not the chart bothering stuff. The guitars are vicious and trebly, similar to the scratchy sound ACR were brewing up in Manchester. The bass is from dub. The drums too. There is dub space and FX and Mark delivering with lines like, 'Western values mean nothing to her', and, 'She is the one thing you can't buy/ With zero reasons for living'. 

On We Are All Prostitutes, their second single, also released in 1979, the band sound angry, disturbed, raging, alienated and violent, the band hewing around, the sound veering from left to right, never settling for a moment with a skronking sax solo interrupting the middle of the song. 

We Are All Prostitutes

The B-side was titled Amnesty International Report On British Army Torture Of Irish Prisoners. 

The Pop Group released two albums, Y and For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder? and then split in 1981. The members went on to influence pop music further in all sorts of ways- between them they were instrumental in Rip Rig And Panic (and beyond that in Neneh Cherry's solo career), Pigbag, Maximum Joy, The Slits and with Adrian Sherwood and On U Sound. They reformed in 2010 at the instigation of Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons. Mark died in 2023 bringing the reunion to an end. Guitarist John Waddington died in the same year. 

Live In October

October already. I was going to welcome in the tenth month of the year with a post of songs with October in the title but on checking lat year's 1st October post I did that a year ago- Chris and Cosey's October Love Song, Pet Shop Boys' October Symphony, The Gentle Waves' October Sky and Maria Somerville's October Moon. It doesn't seem like a year since I wrote that post but tempus does bloody fugit these days. 

Instead here are some songs by a pair of Manchester bands recorded live in Octobers past, both at Polytechnics in Yorkshire, a decade apart.

First in October 1990 (the 25th to be precise, my wife's birthday although we hadn't met at that point) and The High caught live at Sheffield Polytechnic, part of a tour to promote their debut album Somewhere Soon. Four days earlier they played Liverpool Poly, a gig I was at. The song below shows what a good live band The High were, Andy Couzens guitar playing sparkling and John Matthews soft voice sounding really good, the rhythm section (Chris Goodwin on drums and Simon Davies on bass) punchy and dynamic especially during the end section of the album's title track where they take off.  

Somewhere Soon (Live at Sheffield Polytechnic 25th October 1990)

Ten years and two weeks earlier The Durutti Column played at Leeds Polytechnic, Vini introducing the calling card from his debut album, The Return Of The Durutti Column, the always majestic sounding Sketch For Summer...

Sketch For Summer (Live at Leeds Polytechnic 7th October 1980)

Also from the first Durutti Column album is this live version of Requiem For A Father, Vini's fingers running up and down the fretboard in tribute to his dad who died when Vini was just 16, a man he admitted later he did not nearly well enough. This song seems to suggest a lot went unsaid. 

Requiem For A Father (Live At Leeds Polytechnic 7th October 1980)

Ride The Train

The Coral's album from earlier this year, their thirteenth, is a good album that demonstrates their strengths and versatility. Also, their ability to follow their collective noses and the best part of three decades in still come up with the goods. For 388 they went back to the music they listened to as teens- ska, reggae, dub and rocksteady- and used it as a starting point. 1960s and 70s Jamaican and Ethiopian jazz crossed with West Kirby. The playing sounds live and rich and the nicely loose. 

'Play that song again/ You know the one/ The one we used to smoke to/ When we were young', the album opens with on Let The Music Play and James Skelly transports himself back to that time but singing with the voice of a middle aged man. There's no cod reggae on 388, it's not white men pretending to be Jamaicans but it's an authentic musical bedrock to their latest batch of songs. I can't promise it will change your life but its a cracking album, good songs, played and sung with feeling. 

Try this one Ride That Train...

Back in 2001 The Coral, still in their late teens and early twenties, released a debut album that veered between pirate songs about skeleton keys, mad 60s psyche, sea shanties and whatever else they fancied. It was exciting and weird, a psychedelic Wirral on black vinyl. They made Magic And Medicine fairly quickly after, slightly ironing out some of the crinkles and going 60s pop- Dreaming Of You was a deserved hit.

Dreaming Of You

The follow up, Nightfreak And The Sons Of Becker went back to the freak music, Beefheart and Love and gently surreal psychedelia of Super Furry Animals. In 2005, only four years after their debut hey released their fourth album The Invisible Invasion. It was produced by Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley of Portishead, a stripped down version of the 60s psyche they'd been refining over the previous four years with some folk and pop thrown in. This song was everywhere for a while, a gorgeous tune with a real lightness of touch, Wirral psyche- pop.

In The Morning

On the album it's preceded by A Warning To The Curious, all reverb and echo, low key weirdness and with a hint of the Bunnymen lurking inside it.  

A Warning To The Curious

Eudaemonia

 

Eudaemonia is the title of the new album by New York group Birds Of Pandæmonium . The word Eudaemonia comes from Greek, translating as 'living well' or flourishing by living a good and moral life. The band are a duo who met in Brooklyn's club scene and have brought a love of folk, disco, Balearica, jazz and electronics together in an eight track debut out now on Manchester's Sprechen label. I've alreayd written about the first single, a cover of New Wave group New Musik's On Islands, a joyous slice trippy Balearica and their cover of NY loft classic Could Heaven Ever Be Like This, the Birds Of Pandæmonium pair bringing synths, acoustic guitars, FX and drums into a nine minute epic (with Hifi Sean remixes to boot). 

The album goes further. It's not all covers but there are plenty, all reworked into the Birds Of Pandæmonium soundworld. You may not know that you were missing a cosmic disco version of Underworld's Born Slippy from your life but you do now. Blue Jeans is slo mo Yacht Rock version of Lana del Rey's song, a cruise down by the marina looking at the boys and girls as the sun goes down. The last two songs on the album have been occupying a lot of my time. The first is the shortest on the album, a cover of Latin Quarter's 1985 song Voices Inside, a stripped down but musically rich torch song, orchestral with what sounds like a blissfully happy Lou Reed on vocals. Eudaemonia ends with I Want To Believe, a self penned Birds Of Pandæmonium song which, well, just listen to it and improve you journey to work, day and life for the next seven minutes....

Massive blissed out, end of the night, lights down, pulsebeat euphoria, psychedelic dreampop, spirit of Screamadelica vibes, a real come over here and give me a hug and maybe this moment could last forever kind of song. 

Eudaemonia is out now on vinyl and digitally. Get it here. 

Monday's Long Song

Another release that comes all the way ffrom Sao Paulo, Brazil and another one to add to the ambient works of Pandit Pam Pam. The latest is a three track EP, Etangs De La Loge, the third part being a seven minute tribute to a barely moving French pool of water. The music, synth ripples and soft drones, is very much water music. Best to take all three tracks Etangs De La Loge 1, 2 and 3 as one longer ambient piece. Get it at Bandcamp. 

While you're there you can dip back to July and the seven minute track La Fourche- soft chords, notes bending slightly, a distant whirr, things shifting, the sense of weightlessness but at the same time one that becomes a little uneasy. Ambient music is often about the detail and there's lots more going on here if you really listen to it, concentrate on the music rather than just have it on as background ambience. La Fourche is also at Bandcamp. 

Thirty More Minutes Of Lost Baggy

Side B of last Sunday's limited edition tape, Never Change (Baggy- The Lost Tracks 1988- 1993)- as requested by readers last weekend. Side A was a blast with a blur of indie dance, rap, acid house and sampledelica. Side B follows suit. The tape was a follow up to Jon Savage's compilation Perfect Motion, released on Caroline True Records in 2015, Jon's joining of the dots between The Stone Roses backwards tape experiments, Deee Lite's day glo grooves and Sabres Of Paradise's Clock Factory, finding a secret second wave of psychedelia. 

Never Change Side B

• Primal Scream: Come Together (Hypnotone Brain Machine Mix)
• Golden: Anglo American
• Honey Smugglers: Listen
• The Satyrs: Oh Yeah!!
• The Real People: Window Pane (Remix)
• Unknown: Unknown White Label
• The Honey Turtles: Don't You Know (Shoegazer's Weirdo Remix)
• The Stone Roses: Fool's Gold (Down To The Clown Edit)

Come Together was the second of the singles that led into Screamadelica, the 12" featuring Weatherall's epic ten minute mix, 'gospel and rhythm and blues and jazz', and Terry Farley's Suspicious Minds influenced version with Bobby's blissed out vocal. Less well known was the Hypnotone remix (which came out on a second 12" and on the seminal Creation dance compilation Keeping The Faith). Hypnotone were briefly great, a Mancunian DJ/ producer called Tony Martin who made Dream Beam (with the late and much missed Denise Johnson on vocals) and a self titled album that hit all the right spots- spots that often started with an E. Hypnotone's remix of Come Together is a technicolor riot of sounds and samples, Primal Scream sent into a spin- I've always thought it sounds like Primal Scream and Public Enemy playing two different songs on the same stage at the same time, at a rave at 3am. 

Golden were on Saint Etienne's Ice Rink label and released Anglo American in 1992, three young women with Saint Etienne and associates playing and producing which explains why it sounds like a lost Saint Etienne track- think 7 Ways To Love and Join Our Club and this one fits in perfectly. 

Honey Smugglers released a few singles and an album (on cassette only) in 1990, a London indie dance group. Listen's inclusion on a recent From Baggy To Britpop box set has seen all their music uploaded to Bandcamp and the band reforming. Listen is a very 1990 sounding song, that bassline, those drums and a vocal that could easily be Julian Cope. Moreso when the organ comes in. In fact, more and more you can hear Cope and the Teardrops as a key influence in the 1988- 1993 period. 

The Satyrs, a trio, made just one record, a 12" with Oh Yeah!! on the B and Shooting Air on the A. 60s sounding psychedelic indie dance, very Liverpool sounding but actually from London. 

Whereas The Real People were actually from Liverpool, a band who Noel Gallagher has said were a huge influence on the early Oasis- which you can definitely hear in Window Pane with its Beatles vibes, chunky guitars, driving drums and vocal lines. The Real People were formed by a pair of brothers, Tony and Chris Griffiths, in 1986 and by the late 80s were playing regularly round Liverpool. I saw them at least once at The Flying Picket (I think), a trade union owned concert venue and studio on Hardman Street. I also saw them supporting Pixies at GMex in summer 1991, a massive venue for them but the crowd who gathered together down the front got into it and the band responded. Window Pane and some of the debut album, a self titled 1991 release, were produced by Stephen Street but they never made the break through that the songs deserved. 

Unknown. I dunno. Wah Wah guitar, Funky Drummer backbeat, Hendrix and Syd Barratt guitars. Could be 5:30, could be Blur, could someone entirely unknown. 

The Honey Turtles- another band with just one single release, a 12" called Don't You Know in 1991 on Pulse- 8 records. Indie dance gone rave with a dash of early Blur. Pulse- 8 was a London based rave/ hardcore label. 

Fool's Gold is clearly not a lost track. It is one of  The Stone Roses best known, their chart breakthrough, it got them on Top Of The Pops and on the front of the NME on a Swiss mountain top and sent them all over the world. The edit that closes the tape isn't from the 1988- 1993 period either as far as I'm aware and seems to be credited to Frequent Flyers. It's inclusion as the tape's ending is therefore a bit of an outlier in more ways than one but the edit's pretty good, the looped part at the start is nice, it's all a bit irreverent and it brings the C90 to a point where all you want to do is turn it over and start again with Side A. 

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 Oblique Strategy suggestion was Always first steps. 

My steps took me up to Snapped Ankles, The Flaming Stars, Bocca Juniors and The Boo Radleys. The Bagging Area Oblique Saturdays squad excelled themselves with a bumper collection of songs and responses- from the top, The Babies (via Disco Spider), The Ventures (from Ernie), Caetano Veloso (Mmmmmmbop), New Kids On The Block (thank you Al G), Joe Jackson and his KORG drum machine (from John Medd), NKOTB and Public Service Broadcasting (Mrs G), New Age Steppers (from C), Mogwai (Beerfueled), The First Steps (courtesy of Rol), Stereo MCs (cheers Jase), early New Order (danke Walter), Chris and Cosey and Andrew Weatherall (both from Macdiddly), Mary Poppins (an unexpected one from Jake Sniper), The Incredible String Band (via The Swede), Smith and Mighty (from Khayem) and Acid Klaus (Chris ZenArcade's contribution). Amazing stuff, thank you all of you- and the first time that New Kids On The Block have ever darkened these doorways. 

I don't have any Caetano Veloso but have followed up Mmmmmmbop's suggestion and listened to Caetano's 1973 album Araçá Azul online during the week, an experimental album blurring tropicalia, psychedelia, musique concrete and samba and folk, a record that, as Mmmmmbop said, shakes a fist at the repressive Brazilian state and passive consumerist muzak. I do have this Gal Costa song from the same year, co- written by Caetano Veloso and from Gal's 1973 album India. 

Relance

This week's card, which I turned over on Wednesday evening, says this- What are you really thinking about just now?

And I'll be honest, it caught me unawares and startled me a bit. What was I really thinking about? Rather than sit on the suggesiton for a while as I sometimes do the card demanded an immediate response so I started typing almost straight away. 

I'd been going round the blogs and catching up with the daily posts from other music bloggers and one of the thoughts in my mind was what an incredible thing JC is doing at The Vinyl Villain, an 800 song countdown of songs that are important to him, a huge undertaking as a celebration of the upcoming 20th anniversary of The Vinyl Villain. 

I was thinking about going and finishing marking some essays on the use of propaganda in Nazi Germany that I'd brought home and which had a rapidly approaching deadline. 

I was thinking about the songs on Short Stories For Pauline, the Durutti Column album I'd been listening to in the car and which I was about to start writing about (for a piece that I posted two days ago). 

And I was thinking too about the fact that November is bearing down on us, just under six weeks away, and bringing with it on the 23rd what would have been Isaac's 28th birthday and a week later on the 30th what will be the fifth anniversary of his death and the moment I turned the card over I acknowledged to myself that I've been able to feel it physically again in recent weeks, that feeling of being a bit out of sorts and a bit aggy, a bit narked. The dull thud of grief sitting in my chest again. At least, I think that's what it is. I can usually recognise it now. 

So writing this Oblique Saturday's post started there and then with this rundown of what I was really thinking about 'just now'. 

Here's The Charlatans in summer 1995, thinkin' things over, needing a set of vows. 

Just When You're Thinkin' Things Over

What are you really thinking about just now? And do you have a song to go with it? As usual, feel free to drop it in the comment box. 

Can't Be Sure

I've recently become a member of a Whatsapp group album club started by one of my brothers who has a little time on his hands and thought it would be good to introduce a lot of his friends and family to each other (online though some of us have met in real life) and to music we might not have heard. Each week a member of group (chosen alphabetically) suggests an album to the group and the group members then have a week to listen to the album and provide some feedback- did they like it, what did they make of it and so on. 

My brother- let's call him Josh- occasionally intervenes if the group's gone quiet to 'drive engagement' and 'keep people interested' which is probably a good idea because we can all easily forget to reply to messages. I know I can. So far we've done Felt's Forever Breathes The Lonely Word, Sonic Youth's Sister (my suggestion, bit of an opinion splitter, noisy and unconventional in places), Tom Waits' Raindogs, Keith Jarrett's The Koln Concert (completely new to me and one I'll definitely come back to here both to listen to and here at the blog) and The Sundays 1990 album Reading, Writing And Arithmetic.

I haven't listened to The Sundays first album for a long time but still have a copy on vinyl so pulled it out and played it last Sunday night. Several members of the group were huge fans back in 1990 and were transported back to their sixth form days, The Sundays filling a particular gap in the indie world the aftermath of The Smiths splitting up. I remember going to indie nights at Liverpool University in the 1989/ 1990 period where half the girls present were dead ringers for Harriet Wheeler, the quiff/ long hair combination hairstyle, the Levis 501s cinched in at the waist with a brown leather belt, DM shoes. Looking like Harriet Wheeler, in 1989, was no bad thing at all. She had looks and voice that could melt you at twenty paces. 

I enjoyed listening to the album although it felt very time locked to me, very much part of 1990 and a very distinct kind of indie music that was being eclipsed by acid house and Manchester, which is where at that time my head was at. I kept waiting for The Sundays rhythm section to toughen up and kick in but on the whole it's not that kind of record. It's bookish, it's jangly, it knows the way to the library. The singles are all fantastic especially the debut, Can't Be Sure. 

Can't Be Sure

Tom toms, David Gavurin's chiming guitar straight out of the Johnny Marr songbook and Harriet's lovely voice singing of love, luck and money, England's miserable weather, England being as happy as England can be and how desire's a terrible thing. The words are striking, clearly meaningful to her, heartfelt and poetic. 'It's my life/ And though I can't be sure if I want any more/ It will come to me later', she concludes. 

The other singles are really strong- Here's Where The Story Ends and I Won- and I Kicked A Boy is a good song. At the end of side two the closing song Joy delivers a final punch, with Gavurin playing a Vini Reilly sounding guitar part, the bass and drums locked in and Harriet singing loud and clear on top. They push on at the end with a minute to go, the guitar, drums and bass all competing to be at the fore and Harriet repeating 'joy, joy, joy/ Work harder, harder, harder', and just when you think they could easily keep going, go round for a few more bars, really reach a crescendo, they kill it dead. 

Joy

Next week is Madvillainy by Madvillain, a 2004 rap record by MF DOOM and Madlib. An album as far as I know I have never heard.  

Short Stories

One of the best albums by The Durutti Column was recorded in 1983 and then shelved at Tony Wilson's request. Wilson, Vini Reilly's manager as well as his label boss at Factory, heard the track Duet and told Vini that this was what he should be pursuing and at Wilson's encouragement the planned album, due to be released on Factory Benelux and titled Short Stories For Pauline, was put to one side. The new album was Without Mercy, a two sided 12" release marrying neo- classical, Vini's guitar and electronics. 

Duet

Duet is the neo- classical track that caught Wilson's ear, a two instrument piece with Vini's piano playing and a viola, the sound of a late night bar in Belgium just before closing time, the patrons about to wend their ways home though the streets of Brussels. Duet is achingly pretty and with more than a dash of drama too. It was previously released as La Doleur on Lips That Would Kiss. 

Over the years many of the songs  that would have been on the unreleased Short Stories For Pauline turned up elsewhere- on B-sides, FBN CD compilations such as Lips That Would Kiss (some with alternate track names) and on the Durutti Column album Circuses And Bread, out in 1987. An enterprising DC fan could assembly a version of Short Stories... from their own collection and access to a C90 and tape recorder or CD burner. 

In 2012 Factory re- issue label FTM put out a new version of Short Stories, fourteen songs opening with At First Sight and ending with A Room In Southport. They'd all been released ebfore in one verison or another but on Short Stories... were rpesented together as intended for the first time. Across the songs, most of them instrumental, Vini and Bruce hit the heights, guitar parts and drums in melodic sync, a clear step on from the LC and Another Setting albums. Vini and Bruce sound confident and emboldened and the songs are filled out with piano, violin and trumpet, played by guest musicians from the recordings in Brussels, Blaine Reininger, Alain Lefebvre and Anne van den Troost. On Take Some Time Out Vini sings, something Wilson always tried to prevent him from doing, and sounds good, his voice having grown in confidence since the early albums. Take Some Time Out stands alongside much of the rest of Vini's 80s songs. As does this one, A Silence, which he sings on too...

A Silence

Tumbling Bruce Mitchell drums, Vini's chorus/ delayed guitar, a full and rich sound with viola and Vini's voice, a little low in the mix, 'You don't say what mean/ You don't mean what you say'. The songs rises and falls, Vini singing about dreams and love, Bruce as always playing for good of the song. It's got that Factory juxtaposition of sadness and happiness coming together at the same time. 

A Silence came out on the CD re- issue of Circuses And Bread in 2007 and as a longer instrumental track on an expanded version of Without Mercy. But I think it belongs best on Short Stories For Pauline, an album now rightfully restored alongside with the rest of Vini's Factory works and in its correct place. 

23rd September

Today, 23rd September, is the end of summer in astronomical terms and also the autumn equinox. Harvest festival time. The start of autumn. It's strangely non- autumnal here in Manchester, very mild, warm on many days, and the leaves are still green and are on the trees. The shifts in our seasons, weather and climate, seem increasingly pronounced. 

It is also 99 days until the end of the year, something you might or might not want to be counting. 

Derry musician/ producer outfit Autumns released an album in 2024 called Dyslexia Sound Source with a track on it titled 23 Summers which seems appropriate today.

23 Summers

Autumns make minimal ambient/ industrial, post- punk/ dub. 23 Summers is two minutes and thirty nine seconds of drones and static with a sax squawking somewhere in the distance, dissonance and noise as music. It's an interim track really, an interlude between two others. 

Earlier this year Autumns made a track with Belfast DJ/producer Black Bones, a thudding dark disco industrial delight called Cruising. A bassline so taut you could walk on it. Percussion to match. Someone yelling intermittently. Find it at Bandcamp.  

And because I tend to post it most autumns and because it's a total mood shift and contrast to the two above, here's Yo La Tengo's magnificent and beautiful Autumn Sweater, an indie rock hymn to escape and withdrawal. 

Autumn Sweater

'When I heard the knock on the door
I couldn't catch my breath
Is it too late to call this off?

We could slip away
Wouldn't that be better?
Me with nothing to say
And you in your autumn sweater'

Edit Selection

Some recent edit and remix offerings today from a variety of Bagging Area repeat postees and appearances from Lou Reed, Timothy Leary, The Rev. Gary Davis and Jimmy Dean among the voices dredged up from old recordings. 

First up (and not one for the purists I'll wager) is Leo Zero with an edit of Lou Reed's Walk On The Wildside. A free download at Bandcamp, and as Leo says 'made with LOVE/ FOR FUN and for DJ sets'. Probably best to enjoy it for what it is, a dark disco/ late night Balearic version of Lou Reed's 1973 calling card. Lou would either love it or hate it. 

Cardiff's Secret Soul Society continue to ply edits and remixes from deep within the rich tapestry of popular music. Following recent Paul McCartney and Lulu inspired outings the new reggae edit Bukkle Up is a groover, very much one to keep. There's also a new this week, a Balearic disco spliced with dub edit called What About Dub? that sounds like the sort of thing the DJ at the bar in a cosmic/ kitsch sci fi film might be spinning as the hero/ heroine enters the night club. 

Find both at Bandcamp where there's loads more Secret Soul Society edits and remixes to explore. 

Dublin's 100 Poems likes to work in threes- his Balearic trilogy of 2024 has been followed by a trio of albums themed around Americana and the Old West, cowboy songs and country and blues. Last year there was the first of the three, Let The Horse Run Free, and then in late 2025 Rodeo Disco. Mike Wilson now completes the triplet with End Of The Trail, eight edits/ remixes/ versions of songs that take Johnny Cash, Timothy Leary, the Rev. Gary Davis, Bessie Jones, Alan Lomax, Planxty and Jimmy Dean and send them into altered states- cosmic country, Balearic Americana, blues and an undercurrent of dub. 

Three picks from the third of the series. This Record Is Not For You takes a Timothy Leary sample from 1966, Leary's album Turn On, Tune, Drop Out. Leary's advocacy of LSD as a way of life and a marker of a generation gap brought him a certain amount of notoriety. Leary's voice, calming saying that for anyone over the age of forty this record is not for you, is laid over some squelchy acid house and is unexpectedly supplemented by a banjo solo at four minutes, Mike freewheeling with an anything goes, whatever works for the song approach.

Rev. Gary Davis was a blues and gospel singer and player who pioneered a highly influential finger picking guitar style. Mike borrows Gary's song If I had My Way for an epic piece of sundown cosmic blues, Gary's voice echoing down the years from 1967 to 2026. Slow motion dub and FX drenched tune Big John features the voice of Jimmy Dean, American folklore from the days of mining and outpost towns. End Of The Trail can be found at Bandcamp, seven tracks plus an eighth that mixes them into one continuous piece with Elvis, The Clancy Brothers, Lightnin' Hopkins and Ennio Morricone thrown into the casserole pot for good measure. 

Monday's Long Song

Last week Dr Rob at Ban Ban Ton Ton posted a review of a re- issue of a 2003 album by Pharoah Sanders and Bill Laswell, a four track album called With A Heartbeat. It was new to me and I clicked play after reading Rob's words.. The first track, Across Time, began to play and I sat there, entranced for the time it took to play out- seventeen minutes and six seconds. 

The album's core as the tile suggests is the human heartbeat. The resting heart rate pulse beat kicks in, the Pharoah Sanders sax drifts in over the top, a sound that goes all the way back to John Coltrane and the 1950s and Bill Laswell's expansive dub informed sound constructs a world around the two elements, the heart beat and the saxophone. A dub bassline comes in that pushes the track along and there are tabla to add percussive colour. The instruments drop in and out, sometimes leaving just the heartbeat. Sanders sax blows across the top for most of the track's running time, a signature sound riding its own wave, the free form melodic counterpoint to the bass, until at fourteen minutes a sitar picks up the lead. Across Time fades out with the sitar drone and then just the heartbeat. 

A trip through time, part spiritual jazz, part ambient dub, part future music, part meditation. There are three further excursions on the album- Morning Tala, Alankara (Beats Of The Heart) and Gamaka, but at the moment I'm stuck on Across Time. With A Heartbeat is at Bandcamp, out on vinyl for the first time. 

Half An Hour Of Lost Baggy

In 2015 Jon Savage put together a compilation called Perfect Motion- A Secret History Of Second Wave Psychedelia 1988- 1993. Jon pulled together the threads of guitar bands, rave outfits and pop groups who were creating a new wave of psychedelia, not a definitive survey but a snapshot. It very much chimed with my record collection with several Andrew Weatherall tracks, a backwards Stone Roses B-side, songs by The High and Shack, Dee Lite, Electronic, 808 State and Saint Etienne plus Joi, DHS, Northside and a bonkers Pet Shop Boys B-side.

In 2023 the label that released Perfect Motion, Caroline True Records, released a cassette only follow up, limited to just 100 copies, called Never Change- Baggy The Lost Tracks 1988- 1993. I never liked baggy as a descriptor but it's one that's was widely used at the time and has stuck. 

The cassette had an hour of music over two sides of a C60, sixteen songs sequenced together by John K with some extras spliced and mixed in (Loaded's famous sample from The Wild Angles opens up Side A). Some of them are fairly well known- World Of Twist, Stereo MCs and A Guy Called Gerald are all on Side A while Primal Scream and The Stone Roses are on Side B but there are also some very less well known artists and songs on the tape so Lost Tracks is a pretty accurate description. This is an uptempo stew of indie guitars, funky backbeats, a Rolling Stones cover, sampling, Hare Krishna chanting, acid house, Mancunian rap and Bruce Hornsby. 

Never Change Side A

• Sinister Groove: Perfect Person
• World Of Twist: She's A Rainbow
• The Apples: Eye Wonder
• Stereo MCs: What Is Soul?
• MC Buzz B: Never Change
• Joi Bangla Sound: Taj Ma House
• Baby Ford: I Love It
• A Guy Called Gerald: Hot Lemonade
• Sunsonic: Driveaway

Sinister Groove released a four track EP in 1991 on 12" vinyl. One of those very much lesser known EPs from the time. The band were previously known as Bounce The Mouse but sensibly changed the name (not that it made them any better known). Perfect Person is the second song on the EP, a perfectly pitched piece of 1991 guitar pop, funky drummer drums, chiming guitars and a northern sounding vocal. As far as I know they released nothing else. 

World Of Twist were an amazing band who released one album, Quality Street, that wrapped up indie, guitars, Northern Soul, northern psychedelia and a love of kitsch in one package. Their cover of The Stones She's A Rainbow was released, re- released, remixed and promoted in search of a hit. They split a few years later having promised much. 

The Apples were an indie dance band from Edinburgh who released Eye Wonder in 1991. Other than that, I know nothing. 

Stereo MCs would make it big supporting/ blowing the Happy Mondays off stage every night in 1992 and then crossing over with Connected. Before that they had two albums, Supernatural in 1990 and 33- 45- 78 in 1989 from which What Is Soul? is from. In 1989 they constructed their tracks from scratch, sampling records onto tape, pressing pause, winding the record back and letting it go again. Painstaking. Sample spotting fun- Eno and Byrne, Ben E. King, Van McCoy...

MC Buzz B (Shorn Braithwaite) was a rapper from Hulme, from a time when UK hip hop was very undeveloped. Never Change makes liberal use of Bruce Hornsby's That's The Way It Is and showcases Buzz B's positivity and inventiveness. Never Change is from the album Words Escape Me. 

Joi Bangla Sound were a DJ/ production duo, Farook and Haroon Shamsher, from Bradford. They took the sounds from their Bangladeshi upbringing and mashed them together with late 80s street sounds- house, sampling, rap- and released Taj Ma House as a white label in 1988. Desert Storm was NME single of the week in 1992 when that accolade meant something and they performed at WOMAD and signed to Peter Gabriel's label. They became festival regulars and played thousands of gigs in the 90s. Haroon died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1999 and Farook has since continued alone. 

Baby Ford is a UK acid house original, releasing singles including Oochy Koochy, Children Of The Revolution and Beach Bump. I Love It is from 1989 on the label of the day Rhythm King and the album Ford Trax. 

A Guy Called Gerald. You know who Gerald is. Co- writer of 808 State's Pacific State. Voodoo Ray. Emotions Electric. Some of the best and most important UK house singles of all time. Hot Lemonade was recorded in Manchester in 1989 and missed out on the kudos it deserved in that year's run of records that captured people's attention. 

Sunsonic were previously indie band The Flowerpot Men who left guitars for electronics in 1989 and made three singles and an album in 1990/ 1991. Driveaway was the third/ last. Their first single Kind Of Loving (1990) has a B- side called Innocent Man which is a lost ambient classic (but that's a different tape/ mix/ album entirely). 

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 Oblique Strategy suggestion was Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics. 

I converted this suggestion into The Ramones in 1976 and roped in Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie too. Out in the internerland/ real world the Bagging Area community came up with Smokebelch by Sabres Of Paradise (Rickyotter), Buzzcocks (Boredom courtesy of C), Jah Shaka (Ernie), The Cocteau Twins (Spencer), 808 State's Pacific (Al G), Tool (Mrs G), Camper van Beethoven, (Rol), Buzzocks (again, Oh Shit, The Swede) and Mont Kimbie (Chris ZenArcade). And there's nothing wrong about any of those choices, they make a fine Saturday morning mixtape in their own right. 

Boredom

The Swede works in a supermarket in Beccles, Suffolk, the home of Brian Eno (and formerly the town my maternal grandparents retired to). I'm encouraging The Swede to have a brief word with Mr Eno the next time he sees him down the bread aisle or by the deli counter and see if he'd like to drop in and contribute to the fun. If you're reading Brian, welcome. 

This week's Oblique Saturday card is this- Always First Steps.

Snapped Ankles took 3 steps to a development in 2019. Post punk/ psychedelic electronic band vibe, (unhinged in a good way), weird hyperactive 80s crossed with scuzzy Fall influences. 

3 Steps To A Development

The Flaming Stars took 39 steps on their Named And Shamed album in 2004. A Bad Seeds and Gallon Drunk kind of band. You'll like them. 

The 39 Steps

In 1990 Bocca Juniors, the Boy's Own inhouse band of Andrew WEatherall, Terry Farley, Pete Heller and Cymon Eccles, took 63 Steps to heaven. Anna Haigh on vocals singing Weatherall's Aleister Crowley inspired lyrics. A screech of tyres, a massive piano riff calling Thrashing Doves to mind, crunchy drums- a  roof raising record. 'Boy am I gonna wake you up!'

Raise (63 Steps To Heaven)

One shouldn't live in the past but within seconds of Raise playing my initial thought is almost always, 'oh man, take me back...'

In 19943 The Boo Radleys took Giant Steps on their album of that name, a record inspired by John Coltrane's Giant Steps (an album I own on vinyl but don't have digitally). The Do Badleys finally broke their reputation as the band Creation Records couldn't sell with a genre busting, spirit of Screamadelica record. On Lazarus a shoegaze band from Wallasey go dub reggae/ experimental that then becomes trumpet led MBV inspired pop. This is the first time Boo Radleys have appeared at Bagging Area. 

Lazarus

Feel free to drop your own responses to Always first steps into the comment box.

14 Rodney Street

14 Rodney Street, Liverpool. Unlike the childhood homes of The Beatles there is no blue plaque on the outside of the first floor flat and it hasn't been preserved and restored by the National Trust either. In 1978 Paul Simpson moved into the first floor flat, paying a grand total of £7.50 per month in rent. It was in this flat that the early and unnamed band Julian Cope had formed with Simpson, Dave Pickett and Mick Finkler were discussing names. Paul picked up a copy of Daredevil that was lying around, recently found in the basement flat recently vacated by an actor, Ozzie Yue. Paul found a frame with Daredevil and Spiderman facing Submariner in a showdown and the caption, 'the Teardrop Explodes!'

The rest of the band were unconvinced but Cope jumped on it, claiming it to be 'psychedelic brilliance!'. 

Paul's flat was according to Cope 'a hangout and port of call for both the cool people and the crazies'. Paul would be a member of The Teardrop Explodes in their early days and left to front his own group, The Wild Swans. The Wild Swans single Revolutionary Spirit came out on Bill Drummond's legendary Zoo Label, and was Drummond's favourite single on the label. The recording of the song was paid for and produced by Bunnymen drummer Pete de Freitas who accidentally recorded it in mono. Revolutionary Spirit is one of the wonders of its time, a shimmering and drama laden song with lines about the Delta of Venus, Saint Sebastian and the quiet places where angels fear. 

Revolutionary Spirit

The flat at 14 Rodney Street was shared by Paul with his school friend Will Sergeant who like Paul was member of the Eric's scene, Liverpool's punk circle and guitarist in nascent Echo And The Bunnymen. Paul and Will had an on/ off band called Industrial/ Domestic. 

Read It In Books (Peel Session)

In his memoir Echoes Will recalls that despite their love of psychedelia the band rarely dabbled with anything stronger than brown ale.  Paul's autobiography, also called Revolutionary Spirit, describes an occasion where Paul and Will accidentally imbibe 'heroic quantities' of magic mushrooms in the first floor flat at 14 Rodney Street, a trip that had Will pinned in his chair, the wallpaper moving around in front him. The Liverpool police force somehow became convinced that Paul's flat was the epicentre of Liverpool's drug trade and raided it, finding nothing illegal but destroying Paul's carefully put together montage of photos cut out from magazines.

Courtney Love turned up at one point having been told by Julian Cope that she could stay with Paul and Will. Paul shared a flat with her elsewhere in the city later, Courtney's own brand of chaos witnessed up close and first hand. Will moved out to a top floor flat at 19 Aigburth Drive near Sefton Park, with Les Pattison and Pete, a flat that became Bunny HQ. It does not have a blue plaque either to the best of my knowledge. 

I'll Search The World Over

In 1999 Heavenly released the third in a series of DJ mix CDs Heavenly Presents Live At The Social, a double CD package with an Andrew Weatherall mix on disc 1 and Richard Fearless on disc 2. The previous two had been block rocking excursions, big beat and breakbeats courtesy of The Chemical Brothers on Volume 1 and a genre busting blur of reggae, hip hop and electronics by Jon Carter on Volume 2. 

Weatherall and Fearless offered up something a bit different. Now, be prepared for a shock but I'm about to commit a heresy. I've always preferred the Richard Fearless mix over the Andrew Weatherall one. Andrew's is very good, technically brilliant and seamlessly mixed, an eighty minute deep house set with some undeniably great tunes- Marshall Jefferson and Noosa Heads' Mushrooms (Salt City Orchestra Out There remix) for one and Ashley Beedle's remix of Ryuichi Sakamoto's Salvation for another- but for me it doesn't ever really catch fire in the way his 90s techno sets did or the scuzzy electro of the early 00s that come either side of it and the deep house he plays isn't as deep and dubby as the stuff he was playing at his Blood Sugar nights. There, I said it. 

Richard Fearless delivers though- a superb late 90s record box dive into electro and techno that totally captures the excitement of being in a small room with a great DJ playing records. He plays an Andrew remix (the Two Lone Swordsmen remix of Primal Scream's Stuka) and some classic 90s techno tracks- Ron Trent, E- Dancer, Slam, Model 500. Fearless opens his set with this....

Eurotrash Girl

Chicks On Speed were a trio, three women from New York, Munich and Australia converging in 90s Berlin, a feminist art/ punk/ electro/ techno group who as much as anyone became known under the banner electroclash. Synth pop plus techno with a dash of post- modern punk. Their cover of Cracker's Eurotrash Girl was their second single, a fantastic slice of tongue in cheek, end of the century art/ pop. They have said that techno producers would always turn the vocals down so on Eurotrash Girl they placed the vocals front and centre- they also saw themselves to some extent as the Eurotrash Girls of the title. 'Well I've been up to Paris/ And I've slept in a park' the Chicks intone, 'I'll search the world over/ For my angel in black', over throbbing, minimal electronics.

And in the middle of his set, track eleven, Fearless mixes this track by Miami's Jackal & Hyde out of Model 500 and then a few minutes later into Slam, energising robotic techno funk...

Get Down To My Technique

XTRMNTR LVE

The last time I saw Primal Scream play live I didn't have a very good time and I wasn't really in a rush to go back for more. The band have been touring XTRMNTR recently, an album released in January 2000 and one that is the flipside of Screamadelica, an inversion of the 1991 album's blissed out celebration and fusion of acid house and rock 'n' roll. XTRMNTR was made at a time when the band were at the peak of their powers as a live act, having been joined by Mani on bass, Kevin Shields on guitar and pedals, with contributions from The Chemical Brothers and Bernard Sumner and various producers at the control desk- Brendan Lynch, David Holmes, Jagz Kooner, Hugo Nicolson and Dan The Automator. 

Although XTRMNTR came out prior to the geopolitical messes of the 00s it seems to prefigure them, a squally, noisy, ragged, fucked up but highly focused album. It's one that I played a lot back in 2000 and showed the band as forward thinking and open minded again after their detour into Stonesy rock 'n' roll in the mid- 90s, embracing the futurism of noisy guitar rock cut and shut with hip hop and electronic/ industrial. They'd got back on track with 1997's Vanishing Point and then came XTRMNTR. They pitched up in Manchester last weekend for two nights at New Century Hall, a venue at which I've not seen a bad gig to date. 

I wasn't aware that they were being supported by Escape- Ism and was disappointed to arrive at NCH to see Escape- Ism t- shirts on the merch stand and Ian Svenonius talking to fans by the merch desk. Their album last year, Charge Of The Love Brigade, was one of my favourites so it was galling to miss an opportunity to see them play songs from it. Always check who the support are is my takeaway from this error. I also missed the opportunity to say hello to Svenonius as he disappeared again just before the lights went down. 

Primal Scream arrived on stage and played XTRMNTR in full, in order. The only two surviving members from the late 80s are Bobby and Andrew Innes but they have benefited from the recruitment to the ranks of Sabres Of Paradise guitarist Phil Mossman on bass. All in black and wearing a hat he brings not just some style to the frontline but some punch and power to the bass playing. Kicking in with the mutant electro noise funk of Kill All Hippies, the Linda Manz Out Of The Blue sample loud and clear, they show they mean business, all rough edges and distortion and sneery fury. Accelerator is The Stooges compressed and overloaded through an FX pedal and Exterminator sounds huge, gnarly and messy. 

Swastika Eyes is played twice (as on the album), once in the Jagz Kooner guitar version, Phil's bass and the twin guitarists creating a racket and again later in The Chemical Brothers version- the second one is possibly the highlight of the night, lights flashing, films and images projected behind them, the turbo Chemicals synths crossed with guitars punching though and Darren Mooney's drumming. It's not subtle. It's not supposed to be. 'End genocide/ End apartheid/ Free Palestine' is left n the screen behind them as the song dies away. 

Swastika Eyes (Remix)

Bobby leaves the stage for the XTRMNTR instrumentals, the seedy, downbeat, cop show jazz of Blood Money and the MBV Arkestra version of If They Move, Kill 'Em. Both are brilliant, the band clearly buzzing off the songs and each other. A broken, ragged Keep Your Dreams also hits deep, Bobby crooning the end line 'I'm going down to the underground/ As deep as I can go'. The XTRMNTR set finishes with Shoot Speed Kill Light, an epic noisy finale, the guitarist in front of us and Phil coaxing the distorted krautrock out of their instruments. 

The second half is a mix of hits and deeper cuts. Vanishing Point is dedicated to Mani, the first song he played on with the Scream, and they do their cover of I'm Five Years Ahead Of My Time, 60s garage rock originally by The Third Bardot that came out as a Scream B-side back in 2000. 

I'm Five Years Ahead Of My Time

They do I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have, a genuine surprise- I don't think I've seen them play it live for a very long time. The first time I saw Primal Scream was in July 1989 at Planet X in Liverpool, a tiny basement club and they played it that night, Bobby kneeling on the floor, long hair covering his face, howling into the mic. I wouldn't have guessed seeing them at Planet X that night that I'd be seeing them play live 37 years later, playing one of the same songs. I'm Losing more..., as Bobby points out, is important to them. It became Loaded, which they play next. 

They encore with the big hits, crowd pleasing singalongs of Movin' On Up, Rocks and Country Girl, Bobby doing the full on audience participation frontman thing, taking it down and building it up. All good rock 'n' roll fun but for me the real deal was the first half of the night, the scabrous early 21st century, wired and switched on electronic- punk/ noise rock they conjured up in the Bunker on XTRMNTR. 

Blood Money