At The Black Swan

On Saturday night, 4th of July 2026, it was exactly fifty years since the Clash played their first ever gig, supporting The Sex Pistols at The Black Swan in Sheffield. The five man Clash- Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Keith Levene and a drummer (there appears to be some confusion about who occupied the drum stool, possibly Terry Chimes). The band were originally billed as The Weak Heartdrops but had become The Clash by the time they arrived in Sheffield. Paul Simonon said in the Westway To The World documentary that he was so nervous that he messed up the bass intro to Listen and an account by a reader in the NME a week or two later said they were 'a cacophonous barrage of noise'. As well as Listen it seems that The Clash played Rabies (From The Dogs Of Love), a song brought by Joe from the 101ers, a Mick Jones song Ooh Baby Ooh (It's Not Over) that was subsequently dropped and Protex Blue. 

On Saturday evening we gathered at The Black Swan for a guerrilla gig by a Sheffield band named after that song, Mick's tribute to a brand of condoms. Protex Blue busked a six song Clash set in the street outside The Black Swan (now very much an ex- pub, formerly known to locals as The Mucky Duck).

Someone had fly postered the building. A blue plaque (later raffled) was pinned up. Bemused motorists and cyclists stopped at the traffic lights. A crowd gathered and sang along. The band powered through their set and it was all gloriously good fun. Joe Strummer would surely have approved. Sheffield's main police station was just across the road. I think everyone was quietly hoping they might have shown up and moved us along. 

Protex Blue repaired to The Harlequin, a pub a few minutes walk away where at 9 pm they played The Clash's debut album in full to a raucous and appreciative, all ages, crowd, the pub getting hotter and hotter as they blasted and hollered their way through Janie Jones and White Riot, What's My Name and Career Opportunities and all those other songs  from 1977 that make up that album, ending with the mighty Garageland. 'Back in the garage with my bullshit detector...'

Protex Blue 

An encore was demanded. Clampdown, London Calling and White Man (In Hammersmith Palais), all also played outside the Black Swan earlier, plus Clash City Rockers and I Fought The Law. One more song? One more song. Complete Control, one of the zeniths of The Clash's back catalogue, a righteous blast of fury, furious guitars, a high octane complaint about dirty record company dealings. Well played Protex Blue.

Monday's Long Song

Another Monday, another long song, another Four Tet track to start the week... this one dates from 2009 when Four Tet and Burial released a two track 12" single. One of the two tracks was Moth, a nine minute excursion into the inner worlds of Burial and Four Tet. Moth starts out with ambient sounds, sounding like the noises that get caught when someone pocket dials you. A synth stab riff comes in and dubstep drums break through. 

There's lots of detail, lots of sounds and FX that enrich Moth, make it what it is even if you can't put your finger what exactly they are. A snatch of a vocal. Background washes. A bell ringing. Drop outs where suddenly the drums are the focus. Sections where an electronic squiggle and wordless vocal become the foreground. Rumbles of bass. Signals. Abstract, shape shifting and repetitive but also never settling still for long. 

Moth

Forty Five Minutes Of The Clash In Dub

A simple concept for today's Sunday mix- The Clash in dub. The band were steeped in their influences- dub, reggae, rockabilly, blues, rock 'n' roll, glam, garage rock, soul, disco- and once they got past Give 'Em Enough Rope and punk's orthodoxy they gave their influences free rein, their record collections filtered through the unique combination of Strummer, Jones, Simonon and Headon, each man bringing his own thing. Paul Simonon especially brought the dub and the bass. 

The dub began to surface with Armagideon Times, London Calling's B- side and then with Bank Robber and an association with Mikey Dread that brought some genuine Jamaican vibes, vocals and production to the sound. By the time they got to Sandinista! and they'd decided it would be six sides of vinyl, each side six songs long, the dub experimentation became as much part of The Clash as anything else. 

Forty Five Minutes Of The Clash In Dub

• Mensforth Dub
• Radio One (Reprise)
• Outside Broadcast/ Radio 5
• Silicone On Sapphire
• One More Dub
• The Crooked Beat
• Robber Dub
• Living In Fame
• Justice Tonight/ Kick It Over

Mensforth Dub is a dub version of Something About England, a song that more and more seems like one of Sandinista!'s peaks, Joe and Mick duetting on a song about immigration, the 20th century, the impact of two world wars and post- imperial Britain. It fades in with FX and echo, Mick's voice in the distance and a swirl of radio static and noise. Possibly named after Menwith Hill, an RAF listening post in North Yorkshire that is operated by the US air force still. 

Radio One was the B-side to Hitsville UK, a re- working of a Mikey Dread tune from his album Rocker Station, cavernous space and crashing echo. The Roland Space Echo is doing a lot of work. Gloriously dubbed out stuff. 

Outside Broadcast and Radio 5 were two of four versions on the 12" of the 1981 single This Is Radio Clash, Joe on the mic like a radio announcer and then FX, New York radio station samples, backing vox, a laid back early 80s rap courtesy of a very English sounding voice, 'I am the Lord of the dance, the lord of the dance said he'. It goes on for seven minutes, as dub often does, before seguing into Radio 5. 

Silicone On Sapphire is a dub of Washington Bullets, another key Sandinista! deep cut. Joe's lyrics are an account of superpower intervention and destabilisation in the developing world and the Cold War that gave the album its name. Silicone On Sapphire came out of the endless nights of dub experimentation during the Sandinista! sessions. Joe added a new spoken word vocal, a stream of consciousness piece that starts out wondering who holds the key that winds the clock on Big Ben and goes off into early 80s computer lingo, hardwired logic, RAM, data, input, system debugs and many other things that he possibly read out from a magazine or manual. One of those Sandinista! dubs that was overlooked for years and now sounds like a quintessential part of that album. 

One More Dub is a Mikey Dread at the controls dub of One More Time. On Sandinista! they run together, Mikey Dread linking the two with a shout of 'stop wastin' time!'. Bass and phasing to the fore, Topper's drums as ever on point. 

The Crooked Beat was a Paul Simonon follow up to Guns Of Brixton, his way of ensuring he got a cut of the songwriting income. Lovely roaming bassline and a tale of South London blues parties. 

Robber Dub is a dub of Bank Robber that didn't make the single release, eventually coming out on the 1980 compilation  Black Market Clash, a six minute version with drums and bass pushed up front and snippets of Joe's vocal. Classic Clash dub. One of the bar staff at The Golden Lion rushed up to us last weekend asking about it when I spun it as part of our seven hour long ALFOS warm up. 

Living In Fame is another Sandinista! track, a Mikey Dread vocal commenting on the various ska bands the UK had thrown up at the time, challenging them to live up to their names. If you call yourself The Specials he reasons, you better be pretty special, and so on with The Selector, The Beat, Madness and then turns his attention to The Nipple Erectors and Blockheads. Gary Barnacle plays bursts of wailing sax, Strummer joins in with shouts and cries and there's acres of Mick Jones echo- treated guitar.

Justice Tonight/ Kick It Over were the first real Clash dub experiment, a dubbed out version of their cover of Willie Williams' Armagideon Time. Spooked late 70s dread and fireworks, and Joe shouting 'OK OK, don't push us when we're hot!'. 

It often feels like we need The Clash more than ever. 

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 Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame.

Which led in a round the houses kind of way to Half Man Half Biscuit's Eno Collaboration from 1997, Pet Shop Boys in 1987, Talking Heads and Johnny Marr in 1988, and Bob Dylan with The Band back in 1971. 

The joy of this series is in the comments box. Last week's suggestions from the Bagging Area Oblique Saturdays community took in Cowboy Junkies doing Sweet Jane (thank you Walter), Nick Drake's Bryter Later (Ernie, muchas gracias), Aztec Camera's Just Like Gold (courtesy of the shape shifting but definitely human LizLozLaz, and thanks to C for her questions about his comments), Matt Berry's cover of the Blankety Blank theme tune (thanks to Al G and Mrs G), Rol who offered Jason Isbell's 24 Frames, John Cage's 4' 33'' (ta The Swede) and over on social media Chris who jumped from Les Dawson to Andrew Weatherall via Field Of Dreams. 

At some point there's an Oblique Saturdays mix/ compilation/ box set and your names are all on it. 

Just Like Gold

Roddy's never re- issued (to the best of my knowledge) the two singles Aztec Camera did for Postcard, never included them on a any compilations. His view is they are best as they were, a pair of 7" singles from 1981, the magic found solely in those artefacts.  

This week's Oblique Strategy from Mr Eno and Herr Schmidt is this- Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them. 

I can see how a band or musician in the studio could approach this. Take the mistake or the part that makes you cringe (a vocal yelp maybe or a hackneyed chord sequence) that you want to cover up or remove and make it the new centre of the song/ track/ recording. 

I found it more difficult to apply the suggestion to songs to post here and spent some time while commuting to and from work thinking about it. I don't buy into the Guilty Pleasures thing much- you shouldn't feel guilty about liking any piece of music. If you like it, you like it. The fact that someone else doesn't is just that it all comes down to taste. 

Eventually, this song came to mind...

Fight For Your Right

The Beastie Boys themselves became somewhat embarrassed by the success of this song, the fourth single from their debut Licensed To Ill. They became even more embarrassed, annoyed even, by the fact their audience were taking the song seriously, as a statement of fact. They spent a long time trying to distance themselves from it. One way or another it led them to the sampledelic brilliance of Paul's Boutique though so maybe it was worth it. 

Everything about Fight For Your Right is amplified, from the opening guitar power chord and the shout of 'Yeahhh!', the instruction to 'kick it!' and then the riff, Rick Rubin turning everything up as loud as it will go. And then there's the lyrics....

I played Fight For Your Right while DJing at a friend's wedding reception, many many years ago. The groom's mother loved it, pogoing round the venue's dance floor,among the rest of the party rights fighters. 

As a Saturday fourth of July bonus I'm posting this, Galaxie 500 back in 1990 with a song that is just wonderful in every way. 

Fourth Of July

Aidan

Sister Ray Davies are a duo from Muscle Shoals, Alabama and make a glorious shoegaze sound inspired in large part by the early Christian, pre- Norman world of the Northumbrian coast. If you think that all sounds unlikely for a band from Alabama, I'd agree. They released an album in late 2025 called Holy Island, named after Lindisfarne, Medieval home of Saint Aidan, an Irish monk who is said to have converted the Anglo- Saxons of Northumbria to Christianity in the middle of the 7th century. 

Sister Ray Davies followed the album with an EP called Holy Island Baby in April, five new versions and remixes of tracks that include two Pye Corner Audio remixes. The Pye Corner Audio remix of Aidan is something else, a six minute channeling of the spirit of New York's Suicide crossed with Pye Corner Audio's analogue synth drones topped with blissed out, barely there vocals and Sister Ray Davies' guitar drones peering through. It's a beautiful way to spend six minutes of your life

Aidan was known for his strict asceticism and utter conviction in talking to the people of the region at their own level, taking an interest in their lives and slowly converting them to Christianity. What he would have made of 21st century ambient/ shoegaze is anyone's guess but I'm fairly sure if he heard it while near the altar in the monastery on Holy Island he'd have taken it as evidence of the divine. 

There are more versions on the EP- a Pye Corner Audio remix of Morning Bell that shimmers and sways in a shoegaze drift. There is a guitar version of Big Ships that echoes Ride's Vapour Trail with nine acoustic guitar players creating an epic wall of strings and hollow bodied guitars, and a Malaphors version of Nave that is fractured and abstract. The EP is at Bandcamp, digital and vinyl (the vinyl is sold out at Bandcamp but there are copies to be found elsewhere). 

Return To Bass

A week of new album reviews hits a hat- trick today with the second album from Craig Bratley, an eight track excursion called Return To Bass. Craig's first album came out in 2014 so it's been a mere twelve years waiting for a follow up. In the time between the two he has put out some singles and EPs including Play The Game (with Danielle Moore) in 2016 which had an Andrew Weatherall remix, as did 2018's 99.9% (Andrew's remix was titled the 100% Remix, based on Andrew's advice to Craig that you should only put out music if you're 100% happy with it). You can find 99.9% (Andrew Weatherall's 100% remix) and the rest of the EP at Bandcamp. 

In 2019 Craig released a four track Italo/ cosmic inspired EP called A Message From The Outpost and then in 2021 a fantastic 12" with New York singer Amy Douglas on vocals, No In Between. 

No In Between turns up in dub form on Return To Bass, the slo mo, fuzzed out, dubbed out crawl of the Ashigaru Dub, Amy's voice fed through the delay FX as ghostly piano and guitar chords get the same treatment. The album is, no surprise given its title, a tribute to the properties and power of bass music in various forms- Jamaican, electronic, acid house and electro. First track Plasticine Dub marries deep Jamaican bass with North African melodies and vocals, dub from the souk and the Atlas Mountains. A voice gives instructions about love and harmony, living in unity, no more war. 

Everybody Pushing is a nod to the halcyon days of the early 90s, the acid house vibes of The Beloved and Finitribe, the voice of Thomas Gandey recalling the singers of both those bands. On S.A.W. Craig gives us throbbing, buzzing Roland TB- 303 acid qne Thanks For All The Fish is a dance floor monster resplendent with four four drums, hi hats, pumping bass, a cackling voice and tumbling percussion- eventually synths stabs blare and sirens go off and a chant breaks out, 'you gotta beat the clock/ you gotta beat the clock'. 

The album ends with Everybody Pushing Reprise, a version of Everybody Pushing, the drums, bass and vocals dropped out leaving just the synth chords, a New Age/ ambient cinematic ending that chills the album right down, a kiss goodnight. 

More Songs About The Sun

The newest Pye Corner Audio album came out ten days ago and in some ways it works as the flipside to yesterday's post, Boards Of Canada's Inferno. More Songs About The Sun was timed to release with the summer equinox and just as with the gloom and end of days song titles of Inferno, Pye Corner Audio's track titles promise something more optimistic- hope and renewal- with Euphoria, Greet The Dawn, Rays Of Sunshine, As We Begin and My Shimmer all offering positivity. 

Andy Bell appears (again) providing guest guitar on four tracks. Album opener Euphoria fades in with sunlit analogue synth sounds and vibrato and then some distorted chord changes- cosmische and indeed euphoric. A drum machine patters into life and the floating becomes more propulsive. Third track in is Cycle, one with Andy Bell, the thrum of drums and bass, cosmische guitar, epic synth chord changes and a blissed out vocal. 

In the past Pye Corner Audio has made much more dystopic sounding tracks, subterranean ambient, inflected with a similar hauntology to where some of Boards Of Canada's sounds are coming from but on More Songs About The Sun, he's very much heading towards the light. Ambient shoegaze, radiophonic workshop vibes, modular synths. Eight Thousand Years has a rhythm part that blips and blops beautifully accompanied by chord change straight out of West Germany in the 1970s. 

On The Breath Of Now Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin gives a spoken word performance, low key and soft, 'no heroes come out at night', and a moment where the album has some shade to contrast with the light. 

The final four tracks form a serene ending with Rays Of Sunshine giving way to As We Begin (another one with Andy Bell and his guitar), a warm drone offset by distant chord changes and keys. Echoes of My Bloody Valentine's string bending/ head rush sensation. The drums kick in and synths and guitars suddenly switch to sounding all golden. My Shimmer is three minutes of ambient wonder, layers of drones, chords and notes, a choral finale, and we're left to come down with the fifty seven seconds of Blooms Fade, recognising that in nature all things must pass, the seasons change the end of summer, the cycle continues, the autumn equinox must surely follow. For the moment though, 1st July, More Songs About The Sun is exactly what this summer needs. 

More Songs About The Sun is out now on Sonic Cathedral and can be found at Bandcamp, available digitally, on CD and in an array of gorgeously packaged and presented vinyl versions. 

Inferno

The long awaited new Boards Of Canada album- Inferno- came out a month ago. I've been meaning to write about it ever since. Sometimes in the ever increasing velocity of the modern world there is a temptation or urge to comment immediately, the post a review or hot take RIGHT NOW! and I think I've been trying to fight that with Inferno, subliminally maybe, and give it time to soak in and see what I make of it not on the day of release but a month later. It's very much an album that is designed as an album, with a theme running through it, to be taken in one sitting. 

There's been a thirteen year gap between Inferno and its predecessor, 2013's Tomorrow's Harvest. In that time the BoC duo have had a lot of time on their hands to work out their next step. That thirteen year gap has coincided with a lot of things happening on the geopolitical scale and while Boards Of Canada may not be overtly political they have absolutely made music that reflects the modern age. An audio mirror, transmitting the unease and disquiet of the 21st century and steeped in hauntology, voices from the 1970s and 80s repurposed. Public information films. Waco and David Koresh. Ecological disaster. Promised but undelivered futures. False memories. Childhood. Our culture's fixation with both nostalgia and modernity. 

Inferno is all of this and more, the soundtrack to societal collapse. There are muffled, hip hop drums, woozy synths and sounds that could be My Bloody Valentine's guitars taped and sampled from a transistor radio. Backwards sounds and static. Music for the half world between dreaming and being wake, the feeling that you've dozed off with the late night 24 hour news playing. Organised religion is on their minds too. 

In Age Of Capricorn a voice from American TV reads out nonsense as a synth pattern wobbles away. Another voice comes in, 'I see you!' it says, 'Come into my heart, save me!'. On Naraka the synths and chords are urgent, the title music to a dramatic current affairs news programme announcing the apocalypse, modular synth notes blurred with South Asian singing and a low growl. Chords that nod to late 90s/ early 2000s Warp. The BoC pair have pulled Naraka out of the fire, a track to stand alongside their best. Naraka is Sanskrit for Hell. 

Inferno is four sides of vinyl, seventy minutes and eighteen tracks long. It's a whole piece not a collection of tracks. You could argue it's a bit too long but it's an investment- you have to see it through and although there may be a couple of missteps, it's rewarding and illuminating. It's not cheery- the track titles alone give you an idea of what to expect (Memory Death, Blood In The Labyrinth, All Reason Departs, The Process). Nothing quite does what you expect it to- they are masters at jarring sounds, melodies suddenly leaping out of the blue, repeating for a few seconds and then vanishing, drum tracks that are slightly off or that hang around for an irregular numbers of bars. Wrongfooting the listener is all part of the experience. 

Dark, gloomy, intense, the sound of a world burning- Inferno is all of these things but at the end there is some light with the two minutes and thirty nine seconds of I Saw Through Platonia, a calming, ambient haze, gently shifting synth sounds and a faint pulsebeat, the sound of human life continuing. It may not be saying 'don't worry, everything's gonna be alright' but it does offer some relief, a counterpoint to the malaise and just maybe the promise of better days (or at the least the soundtrack to drift off to as the ship goes down).

 

Monday's Long Song

Love Cry is nine minutes and fourteen seconds long and not a single second of it is wasted or superfluous. The long drone intro, interrupted eventually by some off kilter computer sounds flitting in and the thrum of bass, set up the remaining eight minutes. The drums kick in after a minute, rattling and urgent, there are synth squiggles and a three note refrain and after four minutes a vocal, a female voice fed through some kind of FX, intoning 'love cry'. The voice and synths get more and more mangled, the drums and patterns looped and repeated, the musical equivalent of a Möbius loop. Kieran breaks the whole thing apart eventually, the loops collapsing into each other and then a gentle ending, the calm after the storm. I have many favourite Four Tet tracks and Love Cry is absolutely one of them. 

Love Cry

An Hour Of Balearic Beats

Today's Sunday mix comes courtesy of Leo Mas, a veteran of Ibiza in the 80s, a DJ at Amnesia from 1985 onward and one of the pioneers of what became known as the Balearic Beat. Leo has done a 1987 mix, an hour long set split into two halves and out digitally and on cassette (for the genuine 1987 experience). 

It covers all the ground you'd hope it would, the anything goes, freewheeling spirit that he and Alfredo and others found in Ibiza and played in their sets- the ten minute sampler at Bandcamp bounces out of the speakers with The Woodentops and Why Why Why and from there heads into anything and everything Leo fancied playing that had a beat- EBM (Front 242's Join In The Chant), proto- house and techno, Belgian New Beat, goth synth pop and electro and more. 

You can get The Dark Side (Irriverent Mix) at Bandcamp. There are two ten minute previews. The whole hour long mix can be found if you click buy. 

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 Revaluation (A Warm Feeling)

My responses was Saint Etienne's revaluation of late 90s/ early 00s pop into their 2021 album I've Been Trying To Tell You (with Jane Weaver on board on remix duties) and Taking Heads way back in 1978 with New Feeling. 

The Bagging Area community came up with these: Walter with The Beastie Boys and Paul's Boutique; Ernie with Van Morrison's Warm Feeling; Rol and The Smith's Paint A Vulgar Picture; Al G and The Avalanches; Chris with Killing Joke; and Ardliz with a twenty minute Julian Cope extravaganza, Planetary Sit In, that you should know if you don't already...

This weeks' card says this- Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame

This is the first time I've turned an Oblique Strategy card over and felt that maybe Mr Eno and Herr Schmidt are taking the piss a little. 

Maybe it's time for this...

Eno Collaboration (Remix)

Half Man Half Biscuit back in 1997 on their voyage to the bottom of their road.

'Brian's not at home, he's at the North Pole but if you'd like to leave a weird noise'

Going back to the card and the suggestion that I make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame made me think about sleeves and artwork, pop music presented as high art- the Pet Shop Boys have been doing that since the mid- 80s but I wouldn't call their music blank, defitnely not the imperial phase they went through from '87 to '92. 

Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat...

Left To My Own Devices 

I wondered about bad music in good sleeves and, I suppose, the idea that Eno and Schmidt are hinting at; re- framing nothingness as a masterpiece. 

Talking Heads (them again) final album Naked came in a sleeve that played with this idea, a painting of a chimpanzee holding a flower with a heavy gilt frame around it, as if taken off the wall of a gallery. I don't think making Naked was a particularly happy experience for the band, they all knew they were splitting up. Guest stars abound- Mory Kante, Wally Badarou, Kirsty McColl and Johnny Marr among a cast of dozens. On (Nothing But) Flowers Marr plays genuinely brilliant, inventive African hi- life guitar, freed from straitjacket of The Smiths to do whatever he wanted. Meanwhile David Byrne sings about nature reclaiming the cities, a Pizza Hut all covered in daisies...

(Nothing But) Flowers

In 1971 Bob Dylan presented his masterpiece, a song that first appeared on an album by The Band, Cahoots, and then on the second volume of his Greatest Hits (a very odd selection of songs sequenced strangely too in a will this do? sleeve). 

When I Paint My Masterpiece

It's a typically laid back early 70s Dylan song, something quite ordinary in a way- ordinary for him I mean, it's not what I'd describe as blank but equally it's not the match of the songs from his 1964- 1966 purple patch and it's not a Blood On The Tracks song either. Having said that it's vivid and fully realised and streets ahead of some of the stuff he put out on Self Portrait. 

It was a song that Dylan discarded and then went back to, reappearing in his Never Ending tour setlists. When asked about it in an interview in 2020 Dylan said this-

'It's grown on me... I think this song has something to do with the classical world, something that's out of reach. Someplace you'd like to be beyond your experience. Something that is so supreme and first-rate that you could never come back down from the mountain. That you've achieved the unthinkable. That's what the song tries to say, and you'd have to put it in that context. In saying that, though, even if you do paint your masterpiece, what will you do then? Well, obviously you have to paint another masterpiece'. 

Feel free to put your own responses to Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame in the comment box. 

White Gardenias In Your Eyes

I've been enjoying Thurston Moore's 2020 album By The Fire recently, a double vinyl nine track record. Four of the tracks are really long- Breath is over ten minutes, Siren over twelve, Venus thirteen and Locomotives over sixteen. Around these lengthy guitar and electronics with voice songs are some shorter ones. Deb Googe plays bass ad ex- Sonic youth drummer Steve Shelley appears on Breath. Side One has two superb songs- the second is Cantaloupe, a heavy guitar tune with sludgy riffs and psychedelic fireworks, Thurston singing like it's late 1969, coming back to the refrain, 'white gardenias in your eyessssss'. Thurston's guitar solo is totally Hendixian. 

Before that is By The Fire's opening song Hashish- a slow burning introduction to the sound of the album, Television guitars and Black Sabbath riffing, more than a dash of Thurston's ex- band Sonic Youth and nicely ragged, drawled vocals.  

Hashish

Hashish is partly inspired by Arthur Rimbaud's 'derangement of the senses' and partly by Thurston's desire to present love as a narcotic state of being. 'Smoke it and see', he advises. 

Three years before By The Fire Thurston released Rock n Roll Consciousness which was led by the song Smoke Of Dreams. 

Smoke Of Dreams

Two guitars, one spindly and Sonic Youth- esque, the other a Neil Young style topline. Steve Shelley is there on drums again and Thurston sings softly. It's got a studio jam looseness, sounds live and like it was done in one take, Thurston drifting back through four decades of music making, sifting through the embers. 

Andrew Weatherall died in February 2020. Not long after a series of YouTube playlists came to light, Andrew's late night song selections, known as The Black Notebooks. There's a comprehensive post about them at Ban Ban Ton Ton. One of the songs in one of Andrew's black notebooks included was Smoke Of Dreams. 

The Mountain

Gorillaz released their ninth album back in February, a fifteen song set called The Mountain. It's a concept album, like all Gorillaz albums are, but this one's about death and grief and the question of what happens next. The two human mainstays of Gorillaz, Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn, lost their dads within a week of each other while they were in India working on the album. Damon wanted to include Indian singers and musicians- Asha Bhosle (who has since died) appears along with Asha Puthli and Anoushka Shankar. Some of the album was recorded in Mumbai, Rishikesh and Jaipur and the Indian strings and classical instruments are all over the album and very affecting. 

The album was also recorded in London and Florida and there's a slew of guests with Johnny Marr playing on several songs and Idles and Sparks turning up. Once Damon started writing the album it struck him that if the songs were about death and loss, then some of the vocals should be provided by previous Gorillaz guests who had since died. He went back to the tapes and found vocals that hadn't been used on earlier songs, vocals by Mark E. Smith, Dennis Hopper, Trugoy The Dove and Bobby Womack. (Damon didn't get all the deceased contributions he wanted- Lou Reed's estate denied permission, Lou's dying wish was that there be no posthumous releases, Terry Hall's vocals had been wiped and MF Doom's had already been used elsewhere by Danger Mouse). Tony Allen appears as does rapper Proof. All these dead guests found their way into new songs, the voices reincarnated into new songs. 

It's supposed to be heard as a single album, a full piece rather than cut up into digestible chunks to backdrop perpetual doom scrolling. Like all Gorillaz albums, some of it hits and some doesn't. At times Damon's electro- pop smothers the Indian instruments and there's a lot of stuff going on- as ever in Gorillaz world there's a lot of content. But there are several songs that are very good and rather affecting. The opener, The Mountain, is based on an Indian folk song Albarn heard at Rajasthan and reworked with the Hindu Jea Band Jaipur in Jaipur. It's a lovely song, the Indian melodies and instruments doing their thing with Dennis Hopper's voice in there too. This eight minute cartoon segues The Mountain with The Moon Cave (with Bobby Womack and De La Soul's Trugoy) and album closer The Sad God and is a good snapshot of the album. The animation is a joy too, Murdoc, Noodles, 2D and Russel in Disney Jungle Book style.

Last weekend Gorillaz played some stadium gigs in London. This photo turned up on Johnny Marr's social media him and Paul Simonon on stage together, side by side on guitar and bass. A dream guitar- bass combo. 

Johnny and Paul appear on one song on the album together too, Casablanca. It doesn't sound much like either man's former bands, with little trace of either The Smiths or The Clash in it. Johnny's way with a chord sequence is right there though among Damon's electro-pop and enervated vocal, the drum machine pushing away and a choir of voices ascending. Along with a few of the other songs on The Mountain, there's something about it that I find quite moving. 

Casablanca

City Red Hot

Even typing is hot work at the moment. I'm not one to moan about hot weather, we get precious little of it in the north of England and once a year go abroad seeking it, but it does make doing everyday things difficult. As Lee Scratch Perry noted in 1977, city too hot.  

City Too Hot

Lee's solution was to go 'go cool out/ upon the hill top' which makes perfect sense especially when chanted over the top of one of those spacious, otherworldly rhythms he conjured up in the Black Ark in the 1970s. Eight sweltering minutes of dubbed out rhapsody. 

In 1990 Mark E. Smith set his sights on British people in hot weather. We're not really prepared for it are we? One hint of sunshine and there are men walking round with their shirts off, moorland fires started by people with disposable barbecues and an array of milk bottle legs and hastily dug out shorts. 

British People In Hot Weather

The song turned up on the B-side of Telephone Thing. Mark clearly found it all too much. 

'British people in hot weather/ Fill green envelopes and send them to you/ On train ride remarks tracks/ Play Walkmans loud behind you/ Demonstrate on Oxford Street/ About what the hell they couldn't tell you.... 

...people in shorts drunk before you/ Beach wailing Wapping/ His armpit hairs are sprouting/ Designer tramp goes grrrrr/ Looking jolly from Stoke as he walks through/ And makes up titles like this to order/ They're well off their trolley/ Smoking like a chimney/ The spectacles stared out/ British people in hot weather'.

In 1993 The Fall and Lee Scratch Perry came together with The Fall's Why Are People Grudgeful?, a splicing together of two Jamaican singles, Lee's 1968 single People Funny Boy and Joe Gibbs' answer record People Grudgeful. Mark took lyrics from both and combined them as the then current version of The Fall cooked up a post- punk/ alt indie skank.

Why Are People Grudgeful?

Nuclear Summer, Blame And Crunk Funk

Our accelerated 21st century post- Brexit and climate change culture continues. Keir Starmer resigned yesterday morning, his support rapidly shriveling up like that tomato I left on our garden table last night.Two years ago he was a new Labour Prime Minister with a huge majority in the House Of Commons and seemingly a mandate to bring in change. Now he's gone, widely reviled for reasons that aren't entirely clear- his vibe was off *. He was unable to communicate the good things this government have done and doubled down on the bad by, say, arresting hundreds of pensioners for protesting. In the end a huge parliamentary majority that should have given him the freedom to govern for five full years has to be tempered by the fact that he won only a fifth of the electorate at the 2024 general election. The big win two years ago was a Get The Tories Out vote in reality.

Sincerely, I hope Andy Burnham can galvanise people and turn things around. He's a genuinely popular figure (at least round here he is- and there aren't many of mainstream politicians with genuine popularity), has a relatable personality and a back story as Mayor of Greater Manchester that works. He needs to present some policies soon that hit the spot. There's no doubt the familiar right wing media will swing into anti- Burnham mode quickly.

Meanwhile we're baking under temperatures that are entirely beyond the average. Trump's view of Starmer's failure was that he failed on immigration and energy (Open North Sea Oil!' he typed, a view which is part of the problem). I hope his reflecting pool continues to filled with algae.

Some new music to soundtrack societal collapse. First, Daniel Avery remixing Fluke's Atom Bomb, a breath of fresh apocalyptic air- gorgeous synth chords, rattling drums, whispered vocals and big rumbling bass. The Nuclear Summer remix has Avery proving once again he's a master of this kind of thing, ambient techno and rave dynamics. Fluke are mining their back catalogue for updated versions and modern remixes with more to come. Music to soundtrack the shadow of the mushroom cloud. 

Second is OBOST, otherwise known as Bobby Langfield, a young man making music beyond his years. His newest track is Blame, four minutes of dancing synth melodies, the thud of the kick drum and a woozy vocal. In the the second half of blame the energy levels rise, arpeggios and piano blasting out while the voice carries an Arthur Russell- esque feel. Blame (JAB) strips the track down, more acidic, abstract and distorted. Blame is at Bandcamp for less than the cost of two pints of milk. 

Thirdly, Secret Soul Society have a two track EP out this Friday, a collaboration with Flash Atkins, that is aimed squarely at summer dancefloors even if dancing this week is likely to bring on heat exhaustion. Crunk Funk is lighter than air and loose at the seams, breathy and fresh, a lovely groove and insistent chords with a distant vocal. Sunrise, sunset- either will be improved by Crunk Funk. Get it at Bandcamp. 

* There are reasons: he didn't bring enough change quickly enough for people's liking; he was poor at presenting policy and telling a story; he was blank and flat when speaking in public; he U- turned several times which looked weak; some of his policies seemed to hit people Labour should be supporting; he lost left wing support to the Greens due to his pursuit of Reform- friendly policies; he made the disastrous Mandelson appointment; he became a lighting rod for right wing Facebook group politics (the Save Our Kids, flags and hotel mob, the 'two tier' policing critics, the free speechers who want to be able to promote racist views in public with impunity, the far right echo chamber that view him as a communist, the daily battering from the Express and Mail, The Telegraph and The Times). These things come with the territory but the hatred and venom people have for Starmer is a little bizarre.

Monday's Long Song

Justice Tonight/ Kick It Over was The Clash's first full on experiment into dub, done in Wessex studios in London while mixing London Calling (they recorded their cover of Willie Williams' Armagideon Time on 5th November, bonfire night). The two halves are two separate dubs of Armagideon Time, spliced together into one eight minute long slab of righteous Clash dub. 

Justice Tonight/ Kick It Over

Justice Tonight starts with Mickey Gallagher's ghostly organ and then the skanking rhythm with Strummer in the distance, 'A lot of people won't get no supper tonight/ Justice tonight'. The band sound superb, Topper's drums and Paul's bass to the fore and Mick learning the ropes at the production desk with Bill Plant and Jerry Green engineering and mixing. There's some liberal application of space echo and FX, Joe and the instruments dropping in and out and then the pause at four minutes ten seconds as we segue from the first half to the second, from Justice Tonight to Kick It Over. 

The Kick It Over dub goes further, the bassline pumping and a melodica carrying the tune all the way through to Joe's on mic shout of, 'OK, OK, don't push us when we're hot', a response to Kosmo Vinyl intervening as the band strayed over the two minute and fifty eight seconds mark. Joe and Kosmo had agreed that the band shouldn't go beyond the three minute mark on any songs, hence Kosmo's interruption, and Strummer barked at him as the band were smoking and in the groove- the shouting voices and fireworks going off all adding to the fun. Kick It Over drops out to leave just two piano chords, fading. Magnificent.

Thirty Minutes For The Summer Solstice

A thirty two minute mix for the summer solstice, the longest day and the shortest night. Here in the north west of England sunset will be at 9.42 pm, at which point Monday morning will be encroaching a little but it'll well worth sitting out in the fading light, making the most of it. This mix, a blend of ambient and trippy wonky acid house, might make a decent half hour soundtrack to any gnostic solstice ceremony you may wish to perform. 

Summer Solstice Mix

• A Winged Victory For The Sullen: Every Solstice & Equinox
• Arrival featuring Kevin McCormick: One (Solstice Mix)
• Manfredas: Meshuga
• Rich Lane: Solstice (12" Instrumental Mix)
• Sheila Chandra: Raqs (Zillas On Acid Mutation)
• Julian Cope: Head (Long Meg And Her Daughters Mix)

Every Solstice & Equinox is from A Winged Victory For The Sullen's 2021 ambient masterpiece Invisible Cities. The Brussels duo made the album to score a ninety minute theatrical version of Italo Calvino's 1972 novel of the same name, premiered at Manchester International Festival in 2019. I didn't go. I didn't even know about it. I should have and wih I'd gone because the album is stunning.

Arrival's 12" One/ Common Place came out on Before I Die in Janaury and I'm going to keep mentioning it here throughout the year because it deserves to be widely heard. Arrival are from Stockport. Kevin McCormick is a veteran Manchester guitarist now resident south of the city where it becomes fields and lanes. The Solstice Mix of One is an ambient glide with Kevin's guitar playing drippled like musical honey.

Multi Culti is a abased in Montreal who have released several compilation EPs under the name Solstice. Multi Culti Solstice I came out in 2021 and featured Manfredas, Red Axes, Tyu and Zillas On Acid. The text that accompanied the first Solstice EP said 'post- pandemic lockdown inspiration can be found in the great planetary balancing act that has taken place since a cataclysmic impact with an asteroid caused mass extinction and set our earth's orbit off axis'. The solstice and equinox series of releases are delivering 'sonic support at peak moments of cosmic significance'. Which as sleeve notes go is better than just, 'we'd like to thank our partners and the record label for their support'. From Solstice I I've chosen Manfredas and the wonky, otherworldly Meshuga and from Solstice II Zillas On Acid's Arabian flavoured acid freakout of Sheila Chandra's Raqs. 

Rich Lane's Solstice EP came out in June 2020, a slo mo chuggy dub disco treat that came in four versions. Get it at Bandcamp. 

It didn't seem like a Solstice mix would be complete without Julian Cope's involvement. The Long Meg And Her Daughters Mix of Head came out in 1991, a remix by Hugoth Nicolson. Long Meg herself is pictured at the top of this post, photographed when we visited in the summer of 2020. The track and this mix both come to a very sudden stop. 

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 Ghost echoes.

It led me to Patti Smith's book about her young life with Robert Mapplethorpe and to Circle Sky's Ghost In The Machine. The Bagging Area Oblique Squad struck gold with Ghost Box and Dudgrick Bevins, Clientele, Lee Perry and Mouse On Mars, Model 500, Prince Far I, The Specials, Blur and Screaming Soul with Adrian Sherwood. Thank you Chris, Ernie, Rol, Khayem, Mr Ed, Al G and Ghostly Liz. 

Here's some Prince Far I from 1976, echo laden dub produced by Joe Gibbs in Kingston, Jamaica.

Under Heavy Manners

Today's card is this- Revaluation (A Warm Feeling)

A revaluation is to take something and increase its value, to reassess the value of an asset. In 2021 Saint Etienne took some samples from a specific time and place- late 90s and early 00s UK the first term of the Blair government- from a variety of unlikely and uncool sources- Honeyz, Natalie Imbruglia, Lighthouse Family, Tasmin Archer, The Lightning Seeds and Samantha Mumba- and made a concept album about memory, loss, nostalgia for the recent-ish past, a life before the social media age. Was it really a golden age? Saint Etienne seem to be asking or is it a trick of memory? I'm not sure they answer the their question. All the song were named after race horses that won on the day of New Labour's 1997 election victory. Pond House, Little K. Penlop. Broad River. 

Whatever we may think about the good things Tony Blair and the Labour government achieved in their first term- and there were many achievements- they pissed it up the wall with the invasion of Iraq and every time now Tony Blair opens his mouth his utterances surely cause an angel to die. 

Saint Etienne's album played around with all of these things and had a sense of melancholy about it but Pete and Bob really wrote some tunes as well, laptop beats, off kilter loops and samples, found sounds and modern 21st century production. Blue Kite takes ages to build, loops and woozy synths, the dull thud of a kick drum- a revaluation of late 90s/ early 00s pop and urban sounds into something ethereal and dreamlike. 

Blue Kite

Penlop sampled Joy by The Lightning Seeds, Ian Broudie's CD age stadium indie- pop revaluated into woozy, gossamer ambient pop. A remix EP (available only from Rough Trade I think when buying the album back in 2022) further played around with the source material- the samples and the Saint Etienne songs with Vince Clarke, Daniel Avery and Jane Weaver providing the revaluation. Jane Weaver's slow motion ambient/ folk is a low key marvel. 

Penlop (Jane Weaver Remix)

'The name of this song is new feeling... and that's what it's about'...

New Feeling

True Colours

Mike D's return to action has been one of 2026's genuine highlights, three songs out so far, a short run of gigs recently (including one in a bingo hall in North Shields near Newcastle) and an appearance on Jools Holland last weekend. The singles/ songs started with Switch Up, a frenetic uptempo number, and continued with the Beastie sounding rap of What We Got and then the rattly sci fi funk of True Colours.

All three have the inventive energy of classic Beastie Boys, only one of the three voices obviously, but that adventurous, a million ideas a minute spirit is resent and correct. The music comes as least partly from the band 5D, his two son's group. True Colours is very much a band song, a psychey blur with Mike's vocals on top. 

Jools Holland's Sunday night music programme Later... continues. I haven't watched it regularly for years but Mike D being on it piqued my interest. Here he is with the band, all in red tracksuits, doing Switch Up, blurring boundaries and hopping across genres with ease...

This is What We Got, heavy distorted guitars and synths/ FX and loads of Space Echo unit mayhem...

Mike agreed to be interviewed too talking about his return, the imapct of Adam Yauch's death, time, his sons Davis and Skylar and the band 5D, New York in the 70s and 80s and his return to the live stage. Mike's album Thank You is out at the end of August and I'm really looking forward to it. 

Stretford Hopping

This is a bust of John Rylands, a Victorian entrepreneur and philanthropist who lived between 1801 and 1899. The bust is in Stretford Town Hall- a friend had an exhibition of her print making art there recently. I saw Rylands in the foyer, peaking out modestly from a sideboard. He moved to Manchester from Wigan in 1823 and opened a warehouse for his textiles business. Textiles made Manchester. John settled in Manchester and set up his home in Stretford (a mile up the road from us in Sale). In the middle of the 19th century Stretford was a village near Manchester. Now it's very much South Manchester suburb. Maybe Stretford's most famous son is Morrissey who grew up on King's Road and kissed under the iron bridge that now crosses the Metrolink line. 

John Rylands did a lot for Stretford- he paid for the Town Hall, a swimming baths, a library and a coffee house. The Town Hall and library still exist though the baths have gone. There are several coffee houses but possibly not the one Rylands paid for. When he died his widow Augustina paid for a permanent memorial to her late- husband, the famous neo- gothic John Rylands library on Deansgate.

Down Chester Road towards Sale is Stretford Mall, formerly Arndale, currently in the process of being demolished and the town centre rebuilt and regenerated. Stretford Arndale had some rather nice late 60s features, a top deck with a sweeping staircase but 60s modernism is not fashionable and many people did not love the Arndale. In 1971 Muhammed Ali visited Stretford Arndale, promoting Ovaltine at the Tesco supermarket . 

Ali caused such a crowd to turn up and the crush of locals to get so excited about seeing the three time heavyweight champion of the world, in Stretford Arndale!, that he had to be rescued by police. This picture shows Ali retreating from the baying hoard who wanted a glimpse of the great man and some free Ovaltine. Ali is on the right, his head visible as he backs into a corner between stacks of tinned goods. 

The southern end of Stretford was once surrounded by fields and known as the Garden Of Lancashire due to the amount of farmland producing food for the county, vegetables and a large pig market (and copious quantities of Stretford beef- rhubarb). Now the southern end of Stretford is a busy road system overlooked by Stretford Tower, Isaac's favourite building, which I pass every day going to work and which often makes me think of him. 

This potted history of Stretford is a long winded way of getting round to this- tonight at Head, a former branch of Barclays but now a really nice bar, Martin and myself are representing The Flightpath Estate live on the decks, an all vinyl set, from 8.30pm until 11. There is a regular Thursday night slot, Club Solo, which goes out as a livestream on Solo Stream and in person live from Head once a month. Club Solo was born out of lockdown by Stephen Mollynoodles and the archive of previous nights is here. I think you can watch it live and join in on the chat, watching us mess up the transitions and heckle us from the comfort of your front room. Or come down and do it in person. What else would you be doing tonight? Watching Switzerland play Bosnia-Herzegovina while waiting for news from the Makerfield by- election? 

Andy Burnham for the win eh?

Martin and myself will be playing our usual eclectic smorgasbord of dub, Balearic, leftfield indie, Weatherall remixes, Joe Strummer B- sides and maybe some oompty- boompty music for the last hour. 

Mango Street

Mango Street is a largely instrumental version of Island Hopping from Joe Strummer's 1989 solo album Earthquake Weather. It came out on a one sided 12" in October '89, tropical flavours and catgut guitars with spoon percussion. I love it. When I played it at The Golden Lion last September Martin asked, 'what the fuck am I supposed to follow that with?!'. 

Coney Island Baby

Last year I had an intermittent, year long Lou Reed solo career project. In January 2025 I bought a copy of Berlin second hand for £5, an album I owned on cassette in the late 80s but hadn't heard for ages. Not long after I chanced upon a copy of Lou's self- titled debut. From there I zig- zagged through some of his 70s and 80s, buying albums on second hand vinyl as and when I saw them- this took me to Transformer (which I already had), Sally Can't Dance, Street Hassle and then 1982's The Blue Mask at which point I ran out of steam (and if I'm honest enthusiasm- diminishing returns kicks in during the 1980s until 1989's New York). 

A few weeks ago I was in a second hand record shop and flicking through the racks found a copy of Coney Island Baby, cheap and in good condition. Coney Island Baby came out in 1975 on RCA, Lou in the midst of a settled domestic situation with his partner and muse Rachel, a trans woman. The album is a well produced, rich sounding set of songs, a love letter to Rachel and to Coney Island (as I understand it, the Blackpool of New York). The album sounds rich, professional musicians playing in an expensive studio, well arranged songs with crisp, full bodied production. At the time, some critics sniped at it, Lou gone a bit soft, Lou losing his revolutionary self, Lou sounding like The Eagles. Soft rock Lou Reed. They have a point but fifty years distance has also added to Coney Island Baby especially in the context of some of what came later. It's not Berlin but it's not Mistrial either.

There are eight songs and they veer between sublime and ridiculous. It's a Lou Reed solo album- these became the parameters fairly early on. A Gift is ridiculous, Lou singing that he's a gift to the women of this world, over plodding mid- 70s rock. It may be tongue in cheek. It may be deadly serious. Charley's Girl is good, taut and funky, Lou at his speak- singing best. There's a six minute version of She's My Best Friend, a Velvet Underground song that at that point wasn't officially released and wouldn't be until 1986's VU. It's a decent version, some nice spiky guitars and vocals, but if you've heard The Velvets' version first then your palette has already been spoiled. 

Ooh Baby is a rocker, a song for Rachel and a real highlight, lyrics about topless dancers, Times Square, massage parlours and fluorescent lighting, and then a chorus of 'ooh baby ooh baby ooh baby ooh ooh ooh' and later 'ooh baby ooh baby shake your bones now mama ooh baby ooh baby walk it'. It's prime mid- 70s Lou Reed. 

Coney Island Baby ends with the title track, doo wop vocals and laid back guitar rock, Lou singing of the glory of love and how he just wants to play football for the coach (the coach was 'the straightest dude I ever knew', Lou explains). The song gathers and Lou explores friendships, two bit friends, how different people have peculiar taste and that 'the glory of love might see you through'. The backing vocals swell, the guitars squeal and Lou sings of being with his Coney Island baby (Rachel) and how he'd give the whole thing up for her. 

Coney Island Baby

A Walk Across Town

Walking through town recently- we always call the city centre of Manchester town- I came across three music- related artworks that caught my eye. This flyposter for the Massive Attack and Tom Waits single Boots On The Ground on Whitworth Street, posted onto the building which used to have the nightclub The Venue in its basement. The song caused a sensation when it was released back in April, Waits singing from the point of view of a US soldier, a grunt, cannon fodder for foreign wars. 'How much does every soldier weigh?', he/ the narrator asks at one point. I posted it back then but make no apology for its re- appearance so soon after. 

The soldier/ Waits rants about the politicians who send him to war, 'Federal pricks/ Hiding in the senate like a bloated ass tick/ Air conditioned fuckstick loafers/ Sitting in a room of army posters'. In the end the soldier kills 'a brown man' and all they found was his boots on the ground. It's powerful, visceral stuff. 

It's coming out on vinyl, £25 for a 12" single, which is somewhat expensive. On the other hand, it's one of the songs of the year so far. 

Up on the elevated tram station Deansgate Castlefield I saw this piece of graffiti, a local artist's tribute to Gary Mani Mounfield, the much loved and much missed bass player of The Stone Roses- 'I wanna be adored... RIP Mani'. 

I Wanna Be Adored opened the band's debut album, first heard by fans back in early May 1989- a long slow FX and feedback intro and then Mani digging out that bassline. Squire's guitars trickle in and when Reni kicks in on drums we're off, the late 60s re- figured for the late 80s with a huge dash of Roses arrogance. 'I don't have to sell my soul/ He's already in me', Ian sings softly, 'I wanna be adored'. By the time the song winds down four minutes later many of those new listeners were already in deep, a new favourite band.

I Wanna Be Adored

I walked a different way to the pub I was heading to, dropping behind G-Mex and heading up a back road behind the Great Northern Goods Warehouse and to my left was this huge mural, Gorillaz v MCR. Damon Albarn's crew played the Co- op Arena back in April and this piece of paintwork was done to coincide, a history of Manchester from the Roman settlement of the 1st century AD to the arrival of Gorillaz in 2026, sanctioned and approved by Albarn and Jamie Hewlett and done by artist SketchMcr. 

Three Gorillaz songs selected from my hard drive. The Speak It Mountains is from 2010's The Fall, first released as a download only release. The track is various speaking voices and FX, Damon indulging his experimental side. 

The Speak It Mountains

Mick Jones appeared playing guitar on two songs on The Fall, one of which was Amarillo (recorded in Amarillo, Texas, in October 2010). 

Amarillo

Damon Albarn's talent isn't in doubt. He can write and he can sing- he can irritate too sometimes but this is one of those songs where he really hits the spot and finds an emotional connection out on the road in the vast open spaces of the USA. 

The Gorillaz mural has an excerpt from the song Dare (from Demon Days, released over two decades ago now, in 2005), the memorable line provided by Happy Mondays/ Black Grape vocalist Shaun Ryder, 'It's coming up/ It's coming up/ It's dare'. 

Dare

Monday's Long Song

Mid- June brings more treats from Sprechen, this week in the shape of Richard Norris remixes of Birds Of Pandæmonium, a track called Days Go By. Indeed they do- it seems like only a few weeks ago it was the New Year and now we're almost half way through the year. Last July I was standing photographing this church in Ypres, my last school trip at my old workplace, as the evening sun hit it and that doesn't feel like it was eleven months ago either. 

But, back to the music, Days Go By comes with four versions, two remixes- a vocal and a dub of each. The Rooms Of Percussion Mix is long and low slung, a chuggy monster with a bassline that writhes and buckles, some tripped out FX and a reverb drenched vocal. Slo and lo psychedelic cosmische that sounds like it would have fitted perfectly in an Andrew Weatherall DJ set a decade ago. 

The Stripped Mix is every bit the equal, trippier too with backwards parts, FX spiraling round, a nagging thudding rhythm and guitars. Dark dub disco, ideal for mirrorball situations. All four versions can be bought/ listened to at Sprechen's Bandcamp.