Midnight Echoes And American Questions

Out on Exeter's Mighty Force label, the home of much high quality electronic music in recent years, is this ten track album from J- Lower. The album is packed with deep, dynamic tracks. It opens in fine style with this one, String Theory, a punchy and powerful acid track that never stops giving. 

Vortex is one I keep going back too, more 303 action, busy drum pattern, a squelchy bottom end, the distinctive tink of the electronic cowbell and a mangled snatch of vocal. You can listen and buy here.

M- Paths released two albums on Mighty Force and also have a Bandcamp page adorned with electronic music, not just the optimistic ambient- techno of M- Paths but also Reverb Delay's heavy duty dub techno and more recently a track by a third outfit, Mars Geographical. America, What Have You Done! came out last week, an eight minute reaction to the election of Donald Trump and his first few weeks in office which have upended the international order, sold Ukraine down the river in order to make friends with Putin's Russia (appeasement has some powerful messages for us when the history of the 20th century is taken in to account) and sewn chaos and distrust internationally. America, What Have You Done! samples Trump at the start and then powers into a rolling, throbbing acid thumper with a message in the middle. Get it free/ name your price here. 

Nobody Loves You More

Here's one to file in the Albums I Missed In 2024 file- Kim Deal's solo album Nobody Loves You More. There's lots to love about Kim Deal- her past playing bass and writing songs in Pixies, The Breeders and The Amps, her Mid- West/ ciggie smoking voice and her all round coolness. On Nobody Loves You More she takes all of this, her alt rock/ indie songs and adds some slightly unexpected flavours, including string arrangements, a horn section and bossa nova. I read some reviews back in November when it was released but didn't go any further and when I stumbled across the title track last week I suddenly realised what I'd missed...

Nobody Loves You More

What a lovely song that is. The eleven songs on the album veer lyrically from reflections on her mother's Alzheimer's to the actor Rose Byrne to on Coast, a song written when deep in addiction issues and wishing she could enjoy the simple outdoors joy that the surfers she was watching were having. This song, Big Ben Beat, is more in the vein of some of her former bands...

Playing catch up with the album means that I've had the full eleven songs to digest in one go, a wonderful set of songs with Kim joined at various points by Kelley Deal, Steve Albini (who produced eight of the songs), Raymond McGinley from Teenage Fanclub, two of Savages (Fay Milton and Ayse Hassan) and Raconteur Jack Lawrence. 

Norris Triptych

Richard Norris is over forty years into a career and life in music and shows no signs of slowing up or losing inspiration. His Bandcamp subscription service pays off every month with the continuation of his Music For Healing series, a long running ambient/ deep listening music monthly release that is specifically designed to help listeners find peace and calm via twenty minute ambient pieces, all recorded live and in one take at 98 bpm. For 2025 the Music For Healing series has moved into oceans. March 2025 release is called Southern Deep and starts out with Mariana trench style depths followed by waves of synth chords. Find it here. It might help deal with the daily madness coming from the USA.

Richard's Oracle Sound dub outlet is up to volume four, an album out at the start of April with three slices of deep modern dubwise sounds released last week. The Oracle series has grown with each album, out digitally and on vinyl, and the latest is no slouch. Connected Dub is fractured, broken dub,slow motion drums and snakey bass and a very messed up vocal. Earthsea Dub goes slower and deeper still, waves lapping on the shores and a melodica wending its way. Flying Crane Dub is my favourite of the three cuts so far, a long sonorous piano note repeating over bass and drums dredged from the depths of the ocean. Oracle Sound Vol 4 is here. 

As if to prove he can do any electronic style easily and at will Richard has another release lined up for release next week, this one under the name of Dr No with Una Camille on vocals. Let Yourself Go is four four house, a main room banger with bass and bleeps that force the feet to move and Una's vocals rich and deep delight. Early 90s Manchester- style house music vibes. The EP comes with two Richard Norris mixes and a pair of Leo Zero remixes, one electro and one acidic, that do exactly what they promise, deep and dark fun, the Acid Mix particularly. Get Let Yourself Go here. 

Monday's Long Song

Soft Cotton County are from Richmond- upon- Thames and make, in their own words, 'folk music from the future'. In October last year they released an album called 10 Years Of Travel, slow burning, low key dream- pop indie with detours into bossa nova. Last week a remix of the song The Future's Not What It Used To Be came out, a remix by Justin Robertson wearing his Five Green Moons hat. Last year's Five Green Moons album, pagan folk/ dub, was a Bagging Area favourite and Justin's done it again with this remix- slow motion, indie dub stretched out over a very chilled seven minutes and twenty one seconds. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Dub Syndicate

The new Dub Syndicate album- Obscured By Version- has taken up residence on my turntable, nine new versions by Adrian Sherwood of tracks from the 1989- 1996 period, the original tapes redubbed. Style Scott's rhythms remain the centrepiece. Around them Sherwood constructs entirely new versions, the original track sometimes peeking through with classic dub FX bouncing in and out- door bells, lions roaring, bicycle bells, horns, tyres screeching. It's a wonderfully pulled together album, Adrian's tribute to his friend Style who was found dead in his home in Jamaica in 2014. 

Style Scott and Adrian formed Dub Syndicate in 1982, Scott having drummed with Roots Radics, Sons of Arqa and Creation Rebel. Fifteen albums followed, most of them on On U Sound and two recorded with Lee 'Scratch' Perry. 1985's Tunes From The Missing Channel, the third Dub Syndicate album, is a personal favorite, one of my favourite dub/ On U Sound albums. 1990's Strike The Balance is not far behind it. With all this in mind, I thought a Sunday mix was in order.

Forty Five Minutes Of Dub Syndicate

• Right Back To Your Soul
• Drilling Equipment
• Hawaii
• Pounding System
• Walking On The Edge
• Out And About
• 2001 Love
• Train To Doomsville
• Ravi Shankar Pt 1

Right Back To Your Soul is on Obscured By Version, a superb dub of a dub, the bass and riddim riding in, organ and melodica floating around and eventually jazz club piano, Sherwood's mastery of the desk and production at its absolute peak. The original track dates fro the 1993 Echomania sessions according to Dr Rob's excellent sleeve notes. 

Drilling Equipment was on 1991's One Way System and prior to that a cassette only release in 1983 on ROIR, uncompromising sound sculpture, industrial dub.

Hawaii is from 1990's Strike The Balance, an album with vocals courtesy of Bim Sherman and Shara Nelson along with a bizarro world cover of Je T'aime. Hawaii has a lilt and melodiousness to it that is entirely appropriate and naturally a Hawaiian guitar solo. 

Pounding System was the 1982 Dub Syndicate debut, members of Creation Rebel and African Head Charge throwing the heavy rhythms and dub FX around. I think this release actually predated Style Scott joining and then becoming the centre of Dub Syndicate. 

Walking On The Edge is from a live album, Live At The T+C 1991 (not released until 1999) complete with an echo- laden sampled transmission warning of the dangers of nuclear weapons. 

Out And About is from Tunes From The Missing Channel, a seminal dub album with contributions from Jah Wobble, Ashanti Roy, Keith Levene and Bim Sherman. Out And About is the album's closing track, a magnificent dub ending. Ravi Shankar Pt. 1 opens it, the sound of the sitar and dub crossover, a legendary piece of On U music. 

2001 Love is from 19993's Echomania and samples Allen Ginsberg's voice from the 1968 film Tonite Let's All Make Love In London, a documentary about Swinging London.

Train To Doomsville is from Pay It All Back Vol. 2, the series of wallet friendly compilations On U Sound have released periodically since the early 80s. Vol 2 came out in 1988, Train To Doomsville saw Dub Syndicate joined by Lee 'Scratch' Perry. 

Soundtrack Saturday

Today's songs come from the soundtrack to the film High Fidelity, released a quarter of a century ago in 2000, the film version of a Nick Hornby novel of the same name. High Fidelity is about Rob Fleming, a record shop owner going through a mid- 90s, mid- life crisis. It's all very of its time, very mid- 90s/ turn of the millennium, Rob a slightly sad soul who can't commit, who deals with life via making lists and tapes, and with crises by re- organising his record collection. When the book became big- and then the film- lots of people assumed that if you bought records and filed them in any kind of organised way, you were a version of Rob. Which maybe some of us are- but also aren't. 

Anyway, this post isn't really about High Fidelity, a film which has its moments as any film with John Cusack in will. It's mainly about the band in this scene....

Teasers on social media led us to assume that a Beta Band announcement about a re- union was imminent and lo, earlier this week it happened. A tour of the UK in September and October followed by one in the USA. The scramble to get tickets for the UK dates has been a bit mad but I managed to bag a ticket for Manchester Apollo on 4th October and though it's six months away I'm really looking forward to it. Word has it there will be new music too. 

Dry The Rain is on the High Fidelity soundtrack but originally came out in 1997 on their first EP, Champion Versions. The Beta Band sounded so different and so fresh in '97 they became treasures immediately, the melancholic and doleful vocals matched by the inventiveness of the sounds- dub basslines, samples, pots and pans percussion, trumpets, acoustic guitars, a new low key psychedelia for the late 20th century, eclectic but accessible too, experimental but with tunes. Dry The Rain, 1997's best song, floats in, shuffles along, builds beautifully and ends with the chanted vocals' 'If there's something inside that you wanna say/ Say it loud it will be ok/ I will be alright/ I will be alright', the sound of a man trying hard to convince himself that he will be ok. 

Dry The Rain

I saw them in 1999, on what would be Eliza's birthday four years according to the internet, at Leeds Irish Club. I went to review them for a long gone Manchester arts and music magazine. The venue was swelteringly hot, hotter than hot, trousers sticking to your legs hot. The Beta Band were epic, four men with banks of equipment, instruments, amps, microphones and gaffer tape. They split in 2004, three albums behind them and a million pounds in debt. They've all travelled some distance since then. It will be good to have them back.

Another band on the High Fidelity soundtrack, another 90s band combining experimentation and pop and also still touring, are Stereolab. 

Lo Boob Oscillator

Faded

I've been enjoying the new album by The Liminanas, the French husband/ wife duo who've released umpteen album since 2010, an exhilarating fusion of French ye ye, psyche and garage rock. On Faded they've brought in a whole raft of guest vocalists- Bertrand Belin, Bobby Gillespie, Jon Spencer, Pascal Comelade, Penny, Rover and Anna- Jean. The songs sound like a French Velvet Underground, the Mo Tucker backbeat and rattly guitars the bedrock for the vocalists to sing above. It's really good fun and shoots by in a whirl, an album that creates its own universe. Back in autumn last year J'Adore Le Monde lit up a grim November, singer Bertrand Belin reminding us of what's worth holding onto. 

This one, Degenerate Star, has Blues Exploder Jon Spencer and Pascal Comelade giving twin vocal over the thumping drums and wheezy organ. 

And on Ou Va La Chance, Lionel and Marie paid tribute to the late Francoise Hardy with a cover that closed Faded in gloriously romantic style...