Friday Dub Disco Party

Earlier this year Matt Gunn released an EP titled Nowhere, three tracks long and led by the long drifting dubby electronics/ guitars of Something Ain't Wrong If Something Ain't Right- a track that sounded a little like early Verve produced by Adrian Sherwood. Matt's finishing the year with a new EP, four tracks brought together as Electric Dub Cuts. Big Static has a digital reggae bounce, long slow synth chords and the kind of space and feel of The Orb. Wicker Dub is credited to Gordon and Gunn, a seven minute odyssey with chopped up voices from TV adverts, an oompty sounding kick drum, the kind of bassline that gets a nervous system response and synths that prickle the skin and make the hairs on the nape of your neck stand up. 

The third track- Someone Else's Dream (Matt Gunn Dub Mix) by Electric Wood- is a woozy, bluesy, late night howl with a thumping dub rhythm. Electric Dub Cuts concludes with Dub Electric- eight minutes long and the sort of dubbed out indie dance that used to take up all of side B of a 12" single, the results of a guitar band sent spinning into the cosmos by a talented remixer. Lovely stuff. Get all four over at Matt Gunn's Bandcamp treasure trove. 

Out on Duncan Gray's Tici Taci today is the latest EP from Uj Pa Gaz, four tracks out of Tirana, Albania. It's an Adriatic delight, the blissed out feel of Balearica crossed with the chuggy Tici Taci sound and something else, the Tirana magic ingredient. Outerdubelic is expansive and led by a wonderful guitar topline over twinkling synths and chunky drums. Simple Brain is cut from similar cloth, optimistic and forward thinking psychedelic dance music, long synth chords and bursts of acidic squiggle. 

Dissimilar Function is a slo mo treat, a heady, dancing under the stars kind of track, an acid undertow with a two note refrain that splatters itself across the mix, grin inducing, ecstatic stuff. ALFOS via Albania. Shok cuts the tempos again and shuffles in, a voice buried somewhere in the, keys and synths, maybe a guitar, chuggy drums, sunsets... wonderful. Get it at Tici Taci. 

Edit: due to an admin error the release of Outerdubelic is delayed by a few weeks. There are some clips of each track at Soundcloud.

In Leeds Paisley Dark continues to put out high quality releases. The latest comes from Viper Patrol, a wonky acid/ dark disco track called Dancing Voices. The original comes with two remixes, one by  Cosmikuro and one by A Space Age Freak Out. Cosmikuro heads for the darker edges of the dancefloor, shimmering shards of guitar and funky clipped riffs lighting the way. A Space Age Freak Out freaks out, a psyche dub extravaganza. 

The second track is Def Charge- more dark disco with a trippy edge. The remixes of this one come from Ian Vale and Airsine. Ian Vale's is bass heavy and percussive. Airsine's is propulsive and insistent, punctuated by rippling synths and shouts. The whole package is at Bandcamp. 

The Demise Of Love Is Real

Earlier this year Demise Of Love released an EP, four tracks by the combined talents of Daniel Avery, Syd Minsky Sargeant and James Greenwood (Ghost Culture). Last week they released an EP of remixes (called Reworks) with one by each member of Demise Of Love, one third of the whole remixing the whole. 

Daniel remixed Carry The Blame, a sleek techno rework of the source track with rattling drums, sci fi synths, a distant vocal and a feel that is somewhere between Demise Of Love and Daniel's own work (but without the crunching industrial guitars of his new solo album Tremor). It sounds like a robotic New Order, stuck inside the machine (that's a compliment by the way). 

Syd has adopted his Working Men's Club for his remix of Be A Man, a mid- 80s EBM resurrection version- think Nitzer Ebb or more recently Factory Floor. Sirens, tough beats, muscular bass. It breaks down for the line, 'The demise of love is real/ For the energy I feel', and then kicks back in with the statement, 'God the shit really hit the fan/ God I've really gotta be a man'. 

Ghost Culture remixes Strange Little Consequence with Syd's vocal sounding even more numbed out and alienated than on the original. The bass buzzes and the drums punch and a gnarly acidic squiggle works its way in and to the fore. Intense. 

Days Of Miracle And Wonder

Twice recently I've had one of those periods of a couple of days where I become obsessed with a song from the past and play it endlessly. A few weeks ago it was Fine Young Cannibals' I'm Not The Man I Used To Be. Last weekend it was The Boy In The Bubble by The Blue Aeroplanes. 

The Boy In The Bubble (Album Version)

In 1991 Bristol's Blue Aeroplanes were signed to a major and were half expected to crossover. In 1989 they'd supported R.E.M. on the UK leg of their Green tour (I saw them in Liverpool at the Royal Court- they were outstanding and played a memorable supporting set to a full house, Gerald ending it at the lip of the stage arms outstretched. R.E.M. were next level. It was quite a month for gig going- I saw The Stone Roses on 4th May and R.E.M. on 21st). In 1990 they released Swagger and a year later Beatsongs.

The Boy In The Bubble is a cover of a Paul Simon song, the only one he wrote a lyric for while on his controversial, sanctions busting trip to South Africa that led to Gracelands in 1986. The line, 'The way the camera follows us in slow mo/ The way we look to us all', was written in South Africa. The rest was all done back in the USA. 

The Blue Aeroplanes cover, which I must have played twenty times last weekend, is a riot, a blast of early 90s indie guitar rock. The riff and the clang of the guitars make Paul Simon sound like The Clash (appropriately enough as Strummer was a big fan of Graceland). Vocalist/ poet Gerard Langley spits the words out, reveling in Simon's lines about bombs in baby carriages, distant constellations, long distance calls, how 'every generation throws a hero up the pop charts' and the chorus payoff, 'These are the days of miracle and wonder/ Don't cry baby/ Don't cry'.

The video is a lively affair, lots of movement and energy, various guitarists twirling and riffing, dancer Wojtek doing his things, action painting on a glass screen happening while the film is being shot and lots of black denim. 

Paul Simon's video is similarly, mid- 80s video FX- collage and colour to mirror the cross cultural nature of the song, African rhythms, accordion and Adrian Belew playing a synth guitar solo.

Like I say- obsessed. I'm still playing it a couple of times a day. The Blue Aeroplanes have recently released two career spanning albums- a best of called Magical Realism and an alternative best of titled Outsider Art. 

Today is the fourth anniversary of Isaac's funeral. For some reason this anniversary doesn't carry the same emotional weight and dread as the anniversaries in November do, his birthday on the 23rd and his death on the 30th. I can remember aspects of the funeral as if it was yesterday, events and conversations and emotions too. The sheer dread I had waiting to read the eulogy we'd written and the pause when I stood at the lectern to collect myself and try to get the first line out of my mouth. I remember thinking that if I got the first line out, I'd be able to read the rest but getting the line out seemed to take an age. Lou has told me that she and Eliza were sitting on the front row willing me on silently. The first line was, 'They say it takes a village to raise a child...' 

Heck, what a fucking day day that was.

We chose this Billy Collins poem for the celebrant to read at the graveside. I read it again last night while putting it into this post and it has lost none of its power in the last four years- if anything it means more now than it did then.  

'The dead are always looking down on us, they say,
While we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
They are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven
As they row themselves slowly through eternity.

They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
And when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
Drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,
They think we are looking back at them,

Which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
And wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes'

Natal

My contact in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Eduardo, sends me music from his Boston Medical Group label along with updates from his life. He records as Pandit Pam Pam and at the start of this year released Dot, experimental ambient music recorded on modular synths (on at least one occasion with his infant son Diogo asleep in his arms). 

In April Pandit Pam Pam released a single track, The Senator, a track that moved towards the dancefloor, the modular synths joined by a drum track and a lovely trumpet, three different sounds converging into a unified whole. Inventive and totally hypnotic, a 2025 highlight, a treat from Sao Paulo. Go on, listen to this...

In November he put out Newsun, an album fusing field recordings and ambient sounds using analogue synths and Ableton. Pandit Pam Pam's tagline is 'unsettling punky ambience' and that's definitely part of the story and the sound. 

Pandit Pam Pam has released an ambient Christmas EP for the last three - Equipe Exploratoria Papai Natal I, II and III. Volume IV came out yesterday, four tracks for an ambient Christmas. 

Italian Brain Rot Xmas sounds like it was recorded live in a busy shopping centre, a busker with an organ annoyingly close by. A minute in Eduardo's modular synth sounds weave their way in and we're onto more familiar ground, analogue ambience, rising and falling notes, ticking echoes, whispers and space. 

More Christmas music should sound like this.  

The second track is Unconditional Love, a shorter piece, only three minutes long, minimal synth notes and some light background drone. Christmas Arrived (Theme) is an interlude, just forty seconds, the self service machine at the checkout having a pre- Christmas breakdown. Santa Sitting On The Kerbside Wondering What's Next finishes the EP off, three minutes of synths and a heavy background thump that fades out into bubbling water and bird squawks. For Pandit Pam Pam, Christmas is whatever you want it to be. 

Equipe Exploratoria Papai Natal IV is here. 

Monday's Long Songs

There are things going on in Stockport. Luke Una called it, not entirely seriously, 'the new Berlin'. Not only does Stockport have the largest brick built structure in the UK (as seen partially in my photo above), a viaduct constructed from 11 million bricks, and a 60s modernist shopping centre (the Merseyway) that used to have outdoor escalators, and a car park with a lovely Alan Boyson concrete frieze as its wall, but it also has the Underbank. The Underbank is a maze of old streets directly below the old market hall and the Robinson's brewery that dominates the skyline. In the last few years the Underbank has become a regeneration area with independent businesses (clothes shops, a magazine and book specialist, SK1 records) and a growing number of bars and restaurants. In one of these bars, Bruk, Nuremberg dub artist Klangkollektor played, back in August. The set was recorded and released recently as The Stockport Tapes. 

Klangkollektor's twin albums Dubtapes Volumes One and Two, came out on Jason Boardman's Stockport based Before I Die label- both are wonderful albums and Dubtapes Two is sure feature highly in my end of year list. When he played at Bruk, Klangkollektor played tracks from both albums, turning up the echo and the bass and stretching the already dubby tracks out into seriously heavy dubbed out pieces with their lovely Balearic melodies stripped back but still dancing around on top. Baund, from Dubtapes Volume One, completes the live set, an eleven and a half minute deep dive into sound, opening with speaker feedback and guitar chord noise. From this the bass drum emerges and the Space Echo burps and wobbles. The sounds converge, gradually,running into line with each other, the rhythm picks up and the noise flutters around, ricocheting round the room it was recorded in. Its an absorbing and heady trip. 

Baund live at Bruk is at Bandcamp here. This is the original version from Dubtapes Volume One.

The Stockport Tapes is available digitally at Bandcamp. There was a small run of cassettes complete with a hand drawn front cover showing the Underbank and its famous bridge but they've all gone. The Stockport Tapes album in full is here. 

Klangkollektor's Dubtapes Volume Two is four tracks that have helped light up 2025. The last track on the EP is Isle Of Stonsey, a rich and detailed nine minute excursion into blissed out charm with slo mo beats, acres of dub space and a pedal steel guitar that sounds like its gone to Hawaii and isn't planning to come home any time soon. 

 

Fifty Minutes Of Soundtrack Saturday

2025's year long Saturday series Soundtrack Saturday has reached the final reel but before the credits roll it seemed that a Sunday mix of various songs and scores from the various film soundtracks I've written about would make a good Sunday mix. This is the result, seventeen tracks from sixteen films, sequenced with something approaching a narrative arc- it starts out in the desert with Harry Dean Stanton tramping round the dust, stays out west for while and then shifts to Tokyo, sleeplessness and jet lag. We jump around some other locations- Long Island, France, Memphis- and have visions of a post- apocalyptic USA before the climax, a death, some levity and then Rutger Hauer in the rain. 

The photo at the top is of Stretford Essoldo, a former cinema just up the road from me, a beautiful 1930s building that has been sadly empty and unused for decades. 

Fifty Minutes Of Soundtrack Saturday

• Ry Cooder: Cancion Mixteca
• Ennio Morricone: Watch Chimes
• Bob Dylan: Billy 7
• Joe Strummer: Tennessee Rain
• Tom Waits: Jockey Full Of Bourbon
• Kevin Shields: Intro- Tokyo
• Kevin Shields: City Girl
• Mick Jones: Long Island
• David Holmes: I Think You Flooded It
• John Lurie: Tuesday Night In Memphis
• Gabriel Yared: 37 Degrees 2 Le Matin
• Nick Cave and Warren Ellis: The Road
• John Barry: Theme From Midnight Cowboy
• Brian Eno: Deep Blue Day
• Son House: Death Letter Blues
• B.J. Thomas: Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head
• Vangelis: Tears In Rain

Cancion Mixteca is from Paris, Texas, Wim Wenders' 1984 film, a Ry Cooder soundtrack with some dialogue from the film that stands up as an album in its own right.  

Watch Chimes is from Sergio Leone's For A Few Dollars More, the second installment of the Dollars trilogy, released in 1967. 

Billy is from Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid, Sam Peckinpah's 1973 Western, Bob Dylan contributing the soundtrack and appearing in the film. 

Joe Strummer did the soundtrack for Walker, Alex Cox's 1987 Western- one of Joe's best 'wilderness years' songs. 

A Jockey Full Of Bourbon appears in Down By Law, Jim Jarmusch's 1986 film- Tom Waits is one of the three stars of the film as well as being a key part of the soundtrack. 

Intro- Tokyo and City Girl are from Lost In Translation, Sofia Coppola's 2003 film, Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson lost in Tokyo. 

Mick Jones provided three tracks for the 1993 film Amongst Friends- Long Island is the most complete, a Jones solo song. 

I Think You Flooded It is from Out Of Sight, the first of many David Holmes- Steven Soderbergh soundtrack collaborations, released in 1998. 

John Lurie's score for Mystery Train had to compete with some big hitters- Elvis' Mystery Train for one, Roy Orbison's Domino for another. A second Jim Jarmusch film in this mix- the use of music is central to Jarmusch's films. 

Gabriel Yared's guitar playing is from the soundtrack to Betty Blue, another late 80s film that made a deep impression on me- Beatrice Dalle made quite an impression too. 

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' soundtrack work spans all sorts of movies and documentaries. They began with the soundtrack to 2009 film The Road, a harrowing version of Cormac McCarthy's equally harrowing novel. 

Theme From Midnight Cowboy is gorgeous, a John Barry highpoint from a composer who recorded dozens of soundtracks. That harmonica. Stunning. 

Brian Eno's soundtrack work is wide and varied and an Eno only soundtrack mix would definitely work- Deep Blue Day is from the 1996 film Trainspotting but originally on Another Green World, Eno's 1975 album. 

Son House's Death Letter Blues is from 1965, just Son and a metal bodied resonator guitar. It's a stunning song and performance, Son's lyrics and performance can chill to the bone. It appeared on the soundtrack to On The Road, the  2012 version of Jack Kerouac's novel. 

B.J. Thomas' Raindrops Keep falling On My Head was a worldwide smash following its appearance in the 1969 film Butch Cassady And The Sundance Kid. The song is probably what the film is best known for, along with the two stars- Robert Redford and Paul Newman- and the famous shoot out ending. 

At the end of Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's 1982 sci fi/ film noir version of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, Rutger Hauer sits on top of a crumbling building in the rain, holding a dove and improvises a farewell speech as Harrison Ford slumps in front of him, his life saved. 'All these moments will be lost in time', Hauer says as Vangelis' synth score plays. But they're not are they- they replay endlessly, equally moving each time. 

Forty Five Years Ago

Forty five years ago yesterday, 12th December 1980, The Clash released Sandinista! London Calling is the best Clash album, the received wisdom goes (and I can't really disagree), the punk purists might go for the self- titled debut and in terms of sales and going global Combat Rock brought the band to a mass audience and hit singles (eventually even a number 1, thanks to 1991's Levi's advert) but Sandinista! is for me the band's greatest achievement, a huge piece of work that shows how far and how fast they were moving, demonstrates their ambition and refusal to be boxed in by punk orthodoxy, their willfulness and sense of adventure and experimentation. Thirty six songs spread over six sides of vinyl recorded in London, Manchester, Jamaica and New York, it is, as Joe Strummer said in Westway To The World, 'a magnificent achievement, warts and all... I wouldn't change a thing about it'. The greatest triple album of them all. 

Releasing a triple album in mid- December might not have been the wisest move- print journalists with weekly deadlines struggled to get their heads around it or even listen to all of it. It got some poor reviews and adverse reactions but the band reveled in it. Joe liked to believe they were getting one over on CBS, a triple album for the price of a single one (although the band had to forego royalties on it until it hit 200, 000 sales in the UK and took a 50% cut everywhere else). Mick said it was an album for people who couldn't get to the record shops very often, people working on 'oil rigs or Arctic stations'. It is an album which gave up its rewards gradually, revealing something different on each and every listen. Some songs could be completely overlooked, unheard almost, until one day, they suddenly connected. 

It is Clash democracy at its height. Every member of the band has a lead vocal. All four members have song writing credits. It is self- produced, with London Calling's Bill Price mixing and Jerry Green engineering. Mikey Dread, who worked with them at Pluto in Manchester recording Bankrobber (arguably the genesis of Sandinista!) is on hand for the dub tracks (and they make up a good chunk of the album with much of side six and various other dub and reggae influenced songs). Mick's girlfriend Ellen Foley sings, Joe's old mate Tymon Dogg plays and sings, two Blockheads play (Norman Watt- Roy deputising for an absent Paul Simonon on some songs and Mickey Gallagher from the live gigs and London Calling plays keys), Voidoid Ivan Julien plays guitar and cartoonist Steve Bell contributed to the enclosed newspaper/ lyrics sheet The Armagideon Times. Even Mickey Gallagher's kids sing on two songs. It's a monster, bigger even than it sounds when described in writing. It's a mixtape, a compilation album by one band, an audio diary, a radio show, two and a half hours of music that skips from one genre to another with ease... 'it's triply outrageous', said Joe. 

It covers every style of music the band could throw at it and some more besides. Side one bounces into earshot as soon as the needle hits the groove, the rap- rock of The Magnificent Seven showing where they were at. Mick was inspired by the hip hop sounds he heard while in New York, by pirate radio and block parties. He began wearing baseball caps and Cazal 607 glasses. Joe's words are surreal and superb, a riot of phrases torn from newspapers with a cast including Martin Luther King, Karl Marx, Freidrich Engels, Mahatma Gandhi, Richard Nixon, Rin Tin Tin and Plato. The grind of work, Italian mobsters, TVs in cars, cheeseburgers, vacuum cleaners sucking up budgies, police brutality... it all flies by in a blur, a Joe Strummer live commentary while channel surfing. It's followed by Mick's tribute to UK indie labels Hitsville UK, a Motown backbeat and Ellen Foley on lead vox and then Joe's cover of Junco Partner, revived from 101'ers days with Style Scott on drums (future Dub Syndicate/ On U Sound). Topper sings the lead on Ivan Meets GI Joe, the Clash imaging a Cold War face off at Studio 54 (and if I'm honest the one song I could probably lose from Sandinista! without really missing it). The Leader, a two minute rockabilly rumble about the tabloid press and the Profumo affair comes next, the band crooning the chorus, 'Cos you gotta give the people something good to read/ On a Sunday. 

Something About England closes side one, a truly great achievement of a song, the history of the 20th century as seen through the eyes of a homeless man (Joe), trading lines and verses with Mick (as a man leaving the pub and tripping over 'a dirty overcoat'. The opening lines run as true in 2025 as they did in 1980, more so in fact- 'They say the immigrants steal the hubcaps of respected gentlemen/ They say it would be wine and roses/ If England were for Englishmen again'. I'm willing to bet that there's a significant number of middle aged men in this country who support Farage, Robinson, the flag and roundabout bullshit and rising tide of racism in this country while also claiming to be Clash fans. I wonder if they've heard Something About England. 

Something About England

Rap, disco, rockabilly, Gumbo blues, music hall, Motown... side 1 throws itself around like a radio station on shuffle mode. Side two picks up the baton and sprints. Rebel Waltz, a beautiful Joe Strummer lament for young men enlisted to wars and destined to never come home, drifts by, between sleep and wakefulness, waltz crossed with folk dub. Rebel Waltz is the spirit of Sandinista! bottled. Look Here, a cover of Mose Alison jazz passes by and then Paul's bass rumbles in with The Crooked Beat, a dub tribute to South London blues parties, Paul doing his best gap- toothed vocal. As The Crooked Beat dissolves in Mikey Dread dub FX, Mick's guitars squeal in, tyres screeching and engines racing, the sleek modern rock of Somebody Got Murdered, inspired by a sight Joe saw in New York, the straightest rock song on the whole album and a band at the height of their powers. Side 2 ends with the double punch of One More Time/ One More Dub, Clash dub reggae at its finest, Mikey Dread at the controls and Joe invoking the civil rights movement, 'One more time in the ghetto/ One more time to be free'.

Rebel Waltz

Put disc one back in its sleeve, make a brew and come back for disc two. The needle settles onto side three and we're back into New York rap/ funk Clash, Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice). Then there's another minor Clash gem, Mick's Up In Heaven (Not Only Here), a spiky punk rock song with a lovely lead guitar line and lyrics about 'the towers of London', crumbling tower blocks, social housing, unloved walkways, piss filled lifts, cages for families to live in. Three verses, no chorus, Mick sounding as good as he ever did. Corner Soul is more heartfelt Clash, off kilter reggae rock, Ellen Foley's voice underlining Strummer's. Let's Go Crazy is the result of the band thinking they could record in any style they wanted- in this case, gospel, bringing Caribbean church music and Notting Hill carnival into The Clash's world. If Music Could Talk is more dub but with Gary Barnacle's saxophone, two vocals, one in each channel, and the drums from Bankrobber. Side three ends with The Sound Of The Sinners, more gospel, Joe as the preacher singing call and response with the choir. Side 3 is Sandinista! to the max, The Clash throwing everything at the wall and seeing what would stick. It turns out, forty five years later, almost all of it sticks. 

Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice)

Side four is heavy duty Clash, all six songs complementing each other, a run of great and largely under acknowledged tunes. It kicks off with a cover of The Equals' Police On My Back, Mick singing breathlessly, and then we get the Midnight Log shuffle, rocking drums from the 1950s, harmonica, two minutes of pre- 60s murkiness. The Equaliser has Tymon Dogg's fiddle on top of serious dub grooves, Jamaican influences to the fore- one of those tunes that Sandinista! suddenly throws up as a lost gem. Three beauties follow- The Call Up, Washington Bullets and Broadway- sequenced together at the end of disc two, lost in the middle of Sandinista! Songs about conscription, the Cold War, Victor Jara's murder in Chile at the hands of US sponsored death squads, the FSLN (the socialists who overthrew the dictator Somoza in Nicaragua and then faced an uprising by armed guerrillas, the Contras, backed by Reagan's CIA, with Joe finding the album's title at the end of the song as he sings out, 'woah oh Sandinista!'. On Broadway Joe is lost and alone in a bar in New York at six in the morning. He sounds exhausted, as the band play a late night tune, somewhere between blues and jazz, a bit Tom Waitsian. You can hear Manhattan- the lights, the taxis, misted up windows and rain bouncing off pavements, pianos and jerky rhythms- and then it all clicks and snaps into focus, Joe eventually hitting the groove, 'I can't see the light... I can't see the light... give me a push give me a pull...' The song gives way to a burst of Mickey Gallagher's kids singing Guns Of Brixton before one of them says, snippily, 'that's enough singing now'. 

Broadway

Loads of bands would have left it there. Four sides of vinyl and Broadway works as a final song as well as any, a full stop, an ending. The Clash though had decided they were making a triple album. They obsessed over the number three- three discs, six sides, thirty six songs. Disc three steps up to the turntable and side five offers plenty more to discover, more lost gems, deep cuts and secret best songs. Lose This Skin is possibly the least Clash sounding song they ever recorded, Tymon Dogg's violinin the lead and Tymon on vocals. Someone once said it's the most skipped Clash song. Hmmm. Maybe. Charlie Don't Surf is next, inspired by Apocalypse Now! with a dubbed out, backwards intro, helicopter blades and gliding funk rock. Then there's Mensforth Hill, Sandinista's most out there song, Something About England played backwards with FX dropped in. No stone unturned in their quest for breaking new ground. No idea to daft to try. Junkie Slip is urgent and tense. Kingston Advice is more Clash dub reggae, a lost gem and one of their best dub tracks. The bass bumps, Topper's drumming swings, Joe sounds at his best. There's even better to come, tucked away at the end of side five is The Street Parade, a hymn to anonymity, a song about the joy of being lost in the crowd. On The Street Parade they invent some new kind of new musical genre, a Latin American/ Caribbean/ punk/ dub hybrid, joyous but with a edge of melancholy, horns, marimba, guitars and Topper's kick drum, with a rousing vocal from Joe and the sense that the band are saying, 'here we are, thirty songs in and we're still giving you something you've not heard before, are you still listening?'

The Street Parade

Side six is dub, Mick and Mikey going for it in the studio, Joe in the Spliff Bunker (a hideaway constructed from flight cases where he could write lyrics) and the clock ticking into the small hours. It starts with Version City, a strange song that opens with tapes slowing down and speeding up and a radio announcer and then what becomes a slightly haunting song, a bit of jazz and some blues. Living In Fame is a dub of If Music Could Talk with Mikey Dread toasting. Silicone On Sapphire is a dub of Washington Bullets, the rhythm track stretched and bent, the tune mangled and a voice dimly audible. It comes to a halt and Version Pardner rides in, a dub of Junco Partner (from side one), Style Scott back on drums. The kids, Luke and Ben Gallagher, appear for a brief run through  Career Opportunities. Two and a half hours have slipped by, thirty five songs, taking in rock, jazz, blues, gumbo, disco, rap, reggae, dub, gospel, punk and more besides, and the end has come- Sandinista! concludes with Shepherd's Delight, more dubbed out weirdness, noises and FX, tissue paper on a comb, the hint of a tune, the suggestion of the chords from 1977's Police And Thieves, a low key, mellow way to finish this mammoth undertaking and in some way, utterly fitting, totally 1980 Clash. Sandinista! runs out with a small burst of noise, fading away. Viva The Clash! Viva Sandinista! 

Silicone On Sapphire