Last year the five of us that make up the online Andrew Weatherall fan group that is The Flightpath Estate made an album and sold 1000 vinyl copies of it. It featured nine entirely new tracks from Weatherall associated artists and a then unreleased on vinyl Two Lone Swordsmen ambient track called The Crescents. Our album, Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1, came out with our friends at The Golden Lion in Todmorden on Golden Lion Sounds and raised over £6, 000 for Andrew's chosen charities. It made the Piccadilly Records and Uncut end of year round ups, we had three tracks played on Lauren Laverne's 6 Music show as Compilation Of The Week, had a Piccadilly Records window takeover- it was all very exciting. The music was all uniformly superb with tracks by Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s, Timothy J. Fairplay, The Light Brigade (David Holmes), Rude Audio, 10:40, Richard Sen, Sons Of Slough and Hardway Bros, all recorded specifically for the album, and Andy Bell recorded an acoustic/ electric guitar cover of Smokebelch.
We named the album Volume 1, partly chancing our arm collective arms in the hope that we might get to do a follow up. That album, Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Vol.2, is done, dusted, polished, shone and on its way to the pressing plant. The line up of artists and the music stands head and shoulders alongside Volume 1's. In no particular order, Volume 2 features a previously unreleased Sabres Of Paradise track, and new and exclusive music from Richard Fearless (of Death In Vegas), A Certain Ratio remixed by Number, Red Snapper, Richard Norris, David Harrow, Bedford Falls Players, Dicky Continental, the mysterious Unit 14, and a Two Lone Swordsmen cover by Sleaford Mods. Exciting eh?!
Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 will be available for pre- order tomorrow morning at 10 am from the Golden Lion Sounds Bandcamp page and from the Golden Lion Sounds online shop (via The Big Cartel). I'm giving Bagging Area readers a heads up today- I know some of you bought Vol. 1 and would imagine/ hope some of you will want to be online tomorrow, Tuesday 1st July, fingers poised over the Add To Cart button. There are 1000 copies for pre- order tomorrow with a further 500 going to selected record shops in late August when the album will get its full physical release.
We've been sitting on this for a couple of months and we're itching to get it out to people so they can enjoy the music as much as we have been. Mark has done a twenty- five minute mix of all the tracks which I'll share asap and I'll put the links up to order too. There'll be a few other bits of Vol. 2 news coming around over the summer- in the meantime...
David Holmes used the pseudonym The Light Brigade on Volume 1 and has this year putout a 12" on Mystic Arts under the name name. Shuffle The Deck came out on 12" and digitally in May, two tracks- the first was made with Lone Swordsman Keith Tenniswood and samples Andrew at its end, a rabble rousing acid house monster called Shuffle The Deck. The flipside, Only Love Can Save Us, was made in collaboration with Michael Andrews who David worked with on his Blind On A Galloping Horse album and is shimmering, heavenly electronic goodness. Get both here.
The end of year list is a bit of an indulgence but also a good way to look back, revisit albums and songs and enjoy again the music that's made my year. People like lists. The exact positions are very arbitrary. What does it matter if I think something was the 26th or 27th best album of the year? It doesn't. But pulling together my favourite releases of the calendar year is always a fun thing to do and a good way to draw a line under the year. Last year I wrote a massive piece with multiple sections, categories, sub- categories and sub- lists, the total number of releases heading up towards three figures. I must have had more time to think about it and to write it last year than I do now. This year I've slim- lined it to two lists, one for albums and one for singles/ EPs/ remixes, each numbering thirty.
Some years feel like singles years and some feel like album years- 2024 has been a big year for albums, some big hitters and 80s/ 90s bands and artists with big comebacks. I like to think I keep up with new music to some extent and the number of 'old' artists in this list makes me wonder how accurate that is, whether I'm kidding myself about that. But, as they say, it is what it is. Inevitably I will have missed something out from one of these two lists, if not both. Equally inevitably, I will buy an album in the new year that came out in 2024 which should have been in the top 30. Nothing is ever fixed. Maybe that's the way it should be, a constantly fluid and shifting list.
Singles, EPs and remixes
30 Silvertooth: Shut Um Down (A Dub From Outer Space)
29 The Liminanas and Bertand Belin: J'Adore Le Monde
28 Richard Norris: Weatherall's Last Stand
27 Jezebell: Weekend Machines EP
26 Causeway: Dancing With Shadows
25 Hinds with Grian Chatten: Stranger
24 David Harrow and Hugo Nicolson: Revolvalution EP and Rude Audio Remixes
23 Cole Odin and Marshall Watson: Voyager
22 Mick Harvey: When We Were Beautiful And Young
21 Electric Blue Vision: Trance Stance
20 BTCOP: The Custom 88 EP and Rude Audio Remixes
19 Mildlife: Return To Centauri
18 Puerto Montt City Orchestra: Hey You (10:40 Remix)
17 Pandit Pam Pam: Pass A Wish EP
16 Theis Thaws: Fly To Ceiling (David Holmes Remix)
15 Ammomite: You Don't Know Me (David Holmes Remix)
14 Ride: Last Frontier
13 C.A.R.: Anzu (Hardway Bros Remixes)
12 Acid Klaus: PTSD By Proxy EP
11 Raxon: Your Fault
10 Peak High: Dance Hall Days
9 Psychederek: Alt! EP
8 Iraini Mancini: Undo The Blue (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- animation)
7 Lisa Moorish: Sylvia (David Holmes Remix)
6 A Certain Ratio: It All Comes Down To This
5 Galliano: Cabin Fever Dub
A limited edition 7" single that was a very timely release with its line, 'don't want to take my country back man/ Want to take my country forwards', arriving to coincide with the Farage race riots in the summer, Galliano making a return to action and being a voice of reason. The song sampled Andrew Weatherall's remix of the band from 1992's Skunk Funk and borrowed Joe Strummer's vocal phrasings from This Is Radio Clash, and was a very unexpected treat.
4 Amyl and The Sniffers: Big Dreams
As was this, a single ahead of the Melbourne pub punk's third album that showed a different side to the band. Over a picked, circling guitar riff and some spacious production Amy sang a punk rock torch song for all those people stuck in dead end towns and dead end jobs amid a cost of living crisis who want to get out and realise they're another year older and still stuck. The video for Big Dreams, with the band on motorbikes in the desert, was pure rock 'n' roll cool.
3 Alex Kassian: E2- E4 (A Reference To E2- E4 By Manuel Gottsching)/ Mad Professor remixes
Twelve minutes and twenty one seconds of perfection- pulsing spaced out synths lines that lit up the summer. Not that summer really happened in the north of the UK this year. But when E2- E4 played it felt like it did.
2 Orbital, David Holmes, DJ Helen and Mike Garry: Tonight In Belfast
Tonight In Belfast, Mike Garry's beautifully moving poem and voice over David Holmes' remix of Orbital's Belfast, a re- imagining of the Hartnoll brothers 1991 masterpiece is as good as anything else released this yea. It could easily be my number one. David remixed Belfast for the Orbital 30 project, updating it for the 2020s. DJ Helen got Mike Garry to speak his Tonight poem over the top. Mike's words speak to me in all sorts of ways. When I first heard it, so many of the lines for me were about Isaac, it seemed almost like he'd written it for me. Transcendent and emotional, everything music can/ should be. Magical.
'Tonight I want to paint pictures of you/ Write poems and songs and novels all about you/I wanna hold you up so high you're gonna need a spacesuit'
'I love to speak your name aloud/ Simply 'cos I love its sound/ It feels like I'm kinda calling yer/ It feels like I'm kinda talking to ya/ It feels like I'm trying to break through/ You know across this divide'
'I'll tell you what/ Let's slip beyond the confines of this world/Let's forget every single thing we've learned/ Let's rewrite the way this world can turn'
1 Fat White Family: Bullet Of Dignity (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- Animation)
This came out in June, a 12" remix of one of the songs from Fat White Family's latest album Forgiveness Is Yours. The Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Remix takes Bullet Of Dignity, already a fucked up, sordid and groovy number and spins it further, kicking off with percussion, timbales, early 90s kick drum and then a squelchy bassline that oozes dance floor action. It builds, echoes rattling around and the rhythm gathering steam, some piano stabs and then finally, after a drop out and pause, Lias' vocal comes in, a blur of standout lines and attention grabbing phrases- 'You say you're just thirty one/ What's that in cannibal years?' I have no idea what it's about but it keeps giving with imagery, lines about fatal caricatures and suicidal cassettes, words walking in pairs, and how the dialogue's dubbed. There's a Middle Eastern/ North African guitar line that appears and re- appears. At five minutes it takes off even further, the groove and rhythms bouncing around, moving ever forwards.
There are a couple of singles that should really be heading up the singles list but they're both going to appear as part of the albums near the top end of this second list, as much for variety as anything.
Albums
Edit: I've forgotten to include any of 100 Poems brilliant trio of albums from this year- I knew I'd forget something! Out of the three the most recent, Balearic As A System Of Belief, just about edges it. Album number 31.
30 The Jesus And Mary Chain: Glasgow Eyes
29 Fat White Family: Forgiveness Is Yours
28 Reverb Delay: The Storm Has Passed
27 SubDan: Inhale, Exhale, Repeat
26 Duncan Gray: Five Fathoms Full
25 Saint Etienne: The Night
24 Richard Norris: Oracle Sound Volume Three
23 Khruangbin: A La Sala
22 Mick Head and The Red Elastic Band: Loophole
21 The Woodentops: Fruits Of the Deep
20 Dirt Bogarde: Love, Sweat And Beers
19 M- Paths: Submerge
18 Coyote: Hurry Up And Live
17 Klangkollektor: Dub Tapes Volume 1
16 Various Artists: Virtual Dreams Volume II (Ambient Explorations In The House And techno Age, Japan 1993- 1999
15 David Holmes: Blind On A Galloping Horse Remixes
14 Fontaines DC: Romance
13 Richard Sen: India Man
12 A Certain Ratio: It All Comes Down To This
11 J- Walk: Broken Beauty
10 Five Green Moons: Moon One
9 Sedibus: Seti
8 Underworld: Strawberry Hotel
7 Four Tet: 3
6 Jamie Xx: In Waves
5 The Cure: Songs Of A Lost World
I had no idea, along with thousands of other people I imagine, that what I really needed in late 2024 was a new album from The Cure. The opener, Alone, released as a single in the autumn, was an exercise in majestic beauty and beautiful gloom, a three minute instrumental intro and then Robert Smith singing as well as he ever has, about life, love, loss, mortality, and 'the end of every song we sing'. Stunning. The album continued in that vein for the next seven songs, meditations on aging and loss, ending inevitably with Endsong.
4 GLOK/ Timothy Clerkin: Alliance
Electronics and guitars, swirling, woozy modern psychedelia recorded remotely after the pair met at Andrew Weatherall's funeral. A collision of early 90s sounds and 2024 trippiness. For some time it was all I played, a totally addictive seven track album.
3 Bill Ryder- Jones: Iechyd Da
This could easily be album of the year, a January release that I keep returning to. Beautiful songs with acoustic guitars, pianos and grand, sweeping strings, a children's choir from a Birkenhead primary school, Mick Head reading Ulysses, a Gal Costa sample, and amazing stirring production- and then Bill's battered and beaten voice, sounding like a man who's reached the end of the road, has nowhere left to go, broken. The pain he sings about is from experience, the death of his brother as a child (Daniel fell off a cliff while they pair where on holiday, his family forever scarred) and mental health issues ever since.
In the end though he gets there and we do with him- 'I'm still lost/ But I know love/ I know loss/ But I chose love'.
2 Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds: Wild God
Wild God was a step into the light, a conscious decision by Nick Cave to choose joy over sorrow- a line that appears in the song Joy where Nick is visited late at night by a ghost, a boy with giant sneakers and laughing stars around his head, who tells him, 'we've all had too much sorrow/ now is the time for joy'. It shakes me when I hear it.
By this song, the fourth on the album, its clear we've stepped into a new Cave world. The first song, Song Of The Lake, explodes orchestrally Nick muttering 'never mind, never mind...'. It's follow by Wild God, with its heart stopping cry of 'bring your spirit down'. That is followed by Frogs, easily one of the best songs of this year and one of Cave's best, a song where Nick walks home on a Sunday in the rain, amazed at the wonders of the world around him- frogs in the gutter, the rain, Kris Kristofferson. The band sound reborn too. The previous albums were so grief stricken and spectral it was difficult for them to find a way in, Warren Ellis's synths were the core of the sound. Final Rescue Attempt tells of Nick being saved by a woman, and how after that, 'nothing really hurt again/ nothing ever really hurt/ not even real pain'. It's extraordinary stuff, magical, life affirming songs. By the end of side two, when former partner Anita Lane's voice appears (from Nick's answer phone. She died in 2021), we've gone through the wringer and come out the other side, the sheer joie de vivre evident throughout, no more so than in the fade out to Conversion where Nick and the choir sing/ shout, 'Stop! You're beautiful!', at each other.
Both Frogs and Wild God could have been near the top end of the singles list- I've not listened to any songs more than either of those two all year- but now they're fully part of the album as a whole, an album that when I put it on, I play all the way through and one I imagine I'll still be playing long into the future.
1 Various Artists: Sounds From The Flightpath Estate
What else could it be? I did wonder whether I could/ should put the album me, Martin, Dan, Mark and Baz pulled together into my list, if doing it was a bit much. But in the end, it has been the album of the year for me. This time last year we were receiving tracks from the artists we'd approached, music from Justin Robertson, David Holmes, Timothy J Fairplay, Richard Sen, Hardway Bros, Sons Of Slough, Rude Audio and 10:40. Andy Bell's cover of Smokebelch arriving at the last minute was the cherry on top. An unreleased Two Lone Swordsmen track too.
We knew we had something good, all the music was so strong, everyone had really responded so well to us (a bunch of unknowns let's be honest). But we did not expect what then happened. Selling out 500 vinyl copies in a day. Repressing 500 more and selling all of them too. Three of the tracks being played on Lauren Laverne's 6 Music show. Having the window display in Piccadilly Records.
Giving a copy to Paul Simonon at The Golden Lion was as memorable and surreal as anything else that happened in 2024. Appearing in two end of year lists (Piccadilly records and Uncut). All of it has been unreal and yet, there it is, it happened. It would have been nothing without the music though- from the chunky cosmic chug of Sons Of Slough (recorded live at The Golden Lion) to Tim Fairplay's centurion dub, Justin's weird folk/ dub collision and Richard Sen's massive sounding Tough On Chug, Tough On The Causes Of Chug, the dub techno of Rude Audio and 10:40's fairground swirl, Hardway Bros writing our own theme, Theme For Flightpath Estate, and Holmes' magnificent Human: Remains, to Andy's gorgeous cover of Smokebelch, it's a brilliant and beautiful thing and it's my album of the year. To everyone involved, all the artists, my Flightpath friends, Waka, Gig and Matt at the Golden Lion and GLS, Andrew Liles, Rusty for his incredible sleeve art, and the memory of Andrew Weatherall (for whom it is a tribute)- thank you.
More Flightpath Estate news today. A couple of weeks ago the latest edition of Uncut hit the newsagent's shelves, a suited and booted Nick Cave resplendent on the cover and inside, with Wild God sitting pretty in the Uncut album of the year list. The magazine comes with a booklet, My Year In Music, in which a disparate group of leftfield musicians give us the lowdown on what they've been listening to in 2024- contributors include Thurston Moore, Gruff Rhys, Phil Manzanera, Anais Mitchell, Richard Thompson, Lawrence, Bill Callahan, Aiden Moffat, Joan Wasser, Bill Ryder- Jones, Isobel Campbell, Katy J Pearson and Andy Bell. In his piece Andy Bell talks about the Four Tet album 3 and Jamie Xx's In Waves, Beak>, Fontaines DC, Orbital and others.
He then casually drops in this- ''Todmorden label (and absolute heroes) Golden Lion Sounds put out an excellent compilation called Sounds From the Flightpath Estate, a celebration of the spirit of Andrew Weatherall. Full disclosure: this is an album contributed to, but I wanted to highlight it because all the music is such high quality, notably, the Hardway Bros tracks 'Theme For Flightpath Estate''.
This tip of the Ride/ GLOK hat from Andy was very nice obviously and totally unexpected. Yesterday came the Piccadilly Records end of year lists, which are always published in beautiful booklet form, free to pick up from the shop or slipped into any order from them for the cost of 1 penny. When we had our album stocked briefly in Piccadilly Records back in April and had the window takeover event I think we quietly hoped that we might feature in Piccadilly's end of year list but certainly didn't expect it. Piccadilly's lists came out- the top 30 Collections (compilations and re- issues) is where our interest is and our album is placed at number 13. Ahead of us lie some big hitters and local heroes- not least Down To The Sea And Back, Luke Una, some siblings from Burnage, an excellent Jason Boardman compilation I reviewed for Ban Ban Ton Ton, Richard Norris, Galaxie 500, Aphex Twin and The Charlatans. Some decent company to keep! The whole list can be found here.
This is all very exciting for us. A year ago we had most of the tracks that make up Sounds Of The Flightpath Estate Volume 1 sitting on our hard drives, a promise from Rotters Golf Club that we could have a then unreleased Weatherall and Tenniswood track and some ongoing discussions with Golden Lion Sounds about mastering and release dates. What's happened since has exceeded our hopes and expectations at every stage- and as a friend said yesterday, 'you've done this from scratch'. Back in the summer Waka from The Golden Lion said to me, 'imagine it, then create it'. That's the spirit of it I guess- and that's what we've done. And yes, we did call the album Volume 1 for a reason...
Andy Bell, who contributed his cover of Smokebelch that closes the album so appropriately, had an album out very recently, a collaboration with Timothy Clerkin with Andy in his experimental/ electronic GLOK guise. The pair met at Andrew's funeral and made a vague agreement to work together and then during lockdown began exchanging ideas and tracks, bouncing files back and forth. This has resulted in Alliance, a record that for me should be featuring in all the end of year lists, seven slices of experimental but laser focussed guitars x electronics. The music has some influences close to the surface- Aphex Twin, Death In Vegas, Boards Of Canada- but it transcends them at every turn. It is hypnotic, 21st century psychedelic and kosmische. Opener Empyrean kicks in with a huge distorted synth bass riff and then builds, waves of synths and chanted/ looped backing vox in layers. AmigA stutters on after it, tripped out and floating with acoustic guitars, rippling melodies and early shoegaze vocals. On Nothing Ever singer Du Blonde takes the reins, a scuzzed out indie- pop song, with the refrain 'nothing ever goes my way' circling round and round. Scattered is the sound of My Bloody Valentine in 1990 deciding to ditch the noise and FX pedals and dive full frontal into acid house, fed into the blender, with Andy's chopped up, spoken word, non sequiturs, scattered throughout- 'I was driving' and 'it's all too much' punctuated by 'need somebody' and 'scattered'.
The Witching Hour heads out further onto the floor, drums kicking in, the metronomic kick finding its rhythm, backwards guitars and a Wrote For Luck groove taking over. Then a massive bass guitar riff takes the lead. Swirling lights, strobes, light shows. E- Theme takes us to the end, a tinny guitar riff that could be from Ride's early EP/ Nowhere (actually played by Tim) and Aphex Twin vocal fragments, with a rising tide of synths. Magickal stuff- Andy some of the tracks took him into 'a Pagan, pre- Christian headspace... prehistoric rave' and this is a) a very good analogy and b) right up my strasse. You can listen and buy to the whole of Alliance here.
You might remember that earlier this year me and my friends in The Flightpath Estate put out an album, Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1. What started as a pub conversation between a handful of us became a reality and a slew of artists, musicians and producers connected to Andrew Weatherall or members of the Flightpath Estate Facebook group donated a track each to us, to release as a compilation album which we put out on Golden Lion Sounds.
Various jaw dropping things happened around and following its release; we sold 500 copies in a day in February and decided to do a second pressing which also sold out; Lauren Laverne made it her Compilation of The Week on 6 Music and played three tracks from it; Piccadilly Records gave over their whole shop window to it and thirty six copies of Rusty's beautiful sleeve art adorned the shop's front window for a few hours.
The music on the album was first rate, everyone giving us great tracks- we had a previously unreleased Two Lone Swordsmen track, The Crescents, and brand new tracks by Sons Of Slough, Timothy J. Fairplay, Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s, Richard Sen, Rude Audio, 10:40, Hardway Bros, The Light Brigade (I think everyone knows by now that this is David Holmes) and a cover of Smokebelch by Andy Bell. Matt Hum from The Golden Lion stitched the ten tracks from the album into one mix before the album came out which you can listen to here if you don't have a physical copy of the album.
One of the things were were really sure about from the start was that any monies raised and left over after costs had been dealt with would go to charity. There are four chosen charities connected to Andrew- Crisis, Amnesty International, The Multiple Sclerosis Society, and The Thrombosis Society. Last week the final tying up of loose ends was dealt with and we found that we had raised a net total of £5928, which split four ways saw each charity receive a donation of £1482. I wrote a piece for Crisis which they published at their website (although embarrassingly there's a word missing from my text near the end- the penultimate line reads'Thank you to everyone involved- all the artists, Waka, Gig and Matt at The Golden Lion, Rusty for the artwork, everyone who shared news about it online and bought into the (and bought a copy) of the album and mainly to Andrew Weatherall for being the inspiration' but should read 'bought into the idea (and bought a copy) of the album...'. Proof reading your own text is difficult eh?).
We've been blown away at every step along the way with the album- obviously we're really pleased to have raised such an amount of money for charity. And now that we've tied up all the loose ends with Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1 we can start thinking about a follow up, Volume 2...
The Crescents is the opening the track on our album, a three minute piece of ambient music by Andrew and Keith Tenniswood that originally only saw the light of day on a compilation of musical odds and ends called Still My World that was put together in 2003, a promotional CD for the Italian fashion house Zegna in Japan. Martin had a copy of this (quite rare) CD. We all loved The Crescents and chanced our arm contacting Rotters Golf Club and asking if we could license it for our album. Still My World has been released on vinyl this year as part of Record Shop Day, in a brand new sleeve with a lovely piece of writing by Keith about how he and Andrew worked in the studio.
Still My World has since been released digitally and there's a continuous mix too, the ten tracks sequenced together with no gaps. Two of the tracks on Still My World, And Then The Walls Fell and Compulsion, were previously released as a 7" single on Andrew's Hidden Library imprint, Hidden Library 002 (both titled Untitled on that release). The remaining eight tracks were all new to Still My World. Thirty six minutes of magic from TLS world.
If last Sunday's mix, seven and a half hours of the Flightpath Estate DJs playing at The Golden Lion's AW61 celebrations in April, wasn't enough for you our outing at Blossom Street Social two weeks previously has just gone up on Mixcloud too- me, Martin, Dan and guest Rob Fletcher playing a seven hour fifteen minute vinyl only set on the afternoon and evening of 17th March. The full set can be found at Blossom Street Social's Mixcloud. It was the first time a test pressing of our album got played out in the wild, exciting for us even if it didn't exactly stop the traffic in Ancoats. In the end we played five tracks from it- Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s, Rude Audio, Hardway Bros, Andy Bell's cover of Smokebelch and The Light Brigade's Human : Remains.
Rob Fletcher was the man behind Herbal Tea Party, a 90s clubbing institution in Manchester. It started out at the New Ardri in Hulme and moved to Rockworld, midweek techno and electronic music nights that hosted gigs by Andrew Weatherall, Sabres Of Paradise playing live, Orbital, Fabio Paras, The Drum Club, Sven Vath, Psychick Warriors Of Gaia, Justin Robertson and David Holmes among the guests. Rob's got an exhibition at Electric in Chorlton to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Herbal Tea Party- fliers, posters, tickets plus some recordings of sets and gigs- which has its opening night this Thursday. If you're in the area, pop down and say hello.
The set from Blossom Street is a live recording, the Tascam plugged directly into the decks and mixer so there are a few glitches and errors- the sound levels were a bit variable, deck two seeming to drop down in volume at times and the odd technical error here and there (one of us accidentally turning a turntable off at one point and another thinking a record was playing when they were hearing it through the headphones only). Some of the mixing may be a bit hit and miss too; mine especially. If it's perfection you're after, we may not be the people you're looking for. Our tune selection however...
Martin
Lionrock - Rock Steady Romance
Innervisions - Mermaids
Rob
Craven Faults - Deipkier
Detroit Escalator Co. - Psalm
Chapterhouse - Alpha Phase (Retranslated by Global Communication)
Adam
Sedibus - Seti (Pt. 2)
Coyote - Cirrus
Brian Eno - An Ending (Ascent)
Martin
Air - Modulor Mix
Purple Penguin - Memphis
Biome - Skafter
Rob
Two Lone Swordsmen - Big Man Original
The Irresistable Force - The Lie-In King
Pye Corner Audio - Exhumed
Adam
Tranquility Bass - They Came In Peace
Four Tet - Loved
Coyote - Western Revolution
Martin
Mad Professor & Chuck D - At Least The American Indians Know Exactly How They've Been Fucked Around
Craig Bratley ft Amy Douglas - No In Between (Ashigaru Dub)
Don Letts - Outta Sync (David Holmes Remix Edit)
Rob
Drum Club - Alchemy (D-Fex Dub)
The Clash - Justice Tonight / Kick It Over
Leftfield - Release The Pressure (The Desert Edit)
Dan
Mode - Lo-Fi Odyssey (Stallions Remix)
Vanishing Twin - Cryonic Suspension May Save You Life
The Circling Sun - Spirits, Pt.2
Adam
Panda Bear & Sonic Boom - Whirlpool Dub (Adrian Sherwood Reset In Dub Version)
The Clash - Bankrobber / Robber Dub
JIM - Phoenix (Crooked Goth)
Martin
Hedford Vachal - Toys
Hiem ft Roots Manuva - DJ Culture (Hiem 2013 Remix)
The Asphodells - We Are The Axis (Daniel Avery Remix)
Rob
Glok - That Time Of Night (Hardway Bros Meet Monkton Uptown)
The Shamen - Lightspan (Renegade Soundwave Mix)
Orbital - Midnight (Live)
Dan
Trevor Jackson - Lumiline
Hardway Bros - Theme For Flightpath Estate
The Asphodells - Never There (Hardway Bros Remix)
Adam
Rheinzand - Porque
The Durutti Column - The Together Mix
David Holmes - It's Over If We Run Out Of Love
Martin
It's Immaterial - Driving Away From Home (Jim's Tune)
Talking Heads - Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)
Anthony Teasdale - Deep In The Forest Something Stared
Rob
The Liminanas - The Mirror
The Primitive Painter - Hope
Golden Bug & The Liminanas - Variation Sur 3 Bancs
Dan
Patrick Cowley - Jungle Orchids
Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s - Curtains Twitch On Peaks
Richard Norris - Pagan Dub
Adam
Pete Wylie - Sinful (Tribal)
Jo Sims - Bass – The Final Frontier (David Holmes Remix)
Primal Scream - Uptown (Long After The Disco Is Over)
Martin
DAF - Brothers (Mix Gabi)
Massimiliano Pagliara - It's A Lately Thing
Black Strobe - Innerstrings
Rob
Two Lone Swordsmen - Glide By Shooting
The Disco Evangelists - A New Dawn (Back To The World)
Headfunk - Dawn Til Dusk
Dan
Rude Audio - Running Wild
Llewellyn - These Days (Don't Make Me Wait)
The Light Brigade - Human : Remains
Adam
Coyote - Lonely
Andy Bell - Smokebelch II
Martin
Andrew Weatherall - Ghosts Again
The Asphodells - Another Lonely City
Bjork - One Day (Springs Eternal Mix)
Rae & Christian - Swansong (2 Lone Swordsmen Dub)
Two Lone Swordsmen - Rico's Helly (Re-Tailored By Nourizadeh And Teasdale)
Yesterday saw the latest installment in the continuing adventures of our album, Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1. Every step along the way has been a leap into the unknown and it has exceeded our expectations at every stage, from David Holmes saying 'yes' to Justin Robertson sending us the first piece of music to the rest of the tracks coming in to Andy Bell at the eleventh hour sending us his cover of Smokebelch to Rusty's beautiful artwork to the first run of 500 copies selling out in a day to Lauren Laverne playing some of the tracks on 6 Music and making it compilation of the week to the actual physical records arriving to it appearing on Piccadilly Records website a couple of weeks ago... on and on it's gone, jaw dropping at every turn. Last week when I went to see ACR at Soup I called in at Piccadilly Records and was massively excited to see our album in the racks. Then, entering the venue, the man in front of me had a copy in his carrier bag. Yesterday, another amazing moment- Piccadilly Records gave us a full window display.
I've been buying records from this shop in three different city centre locations, since the late 80s. They are my first choice of shop for new music. To see thirty six copies of our album in the window was a fairly mind blowing experience. Me, Dan and Martin from The Flightpath Estate and Matt from The Golden Lion all attended- and here we are (left to right, Dan, me, Martin, Matt. Yes, Matt is bringing the average age down a bit). Twenty copies of the album went to Piccadilly but I believe they've all gone now. Ten went to Vinyl Exchange over the road (another shop I've been buying records from for decades).
With this long running Sunday mix series I usually try to come in at around thirty to forty minutes, occasionally going up to an hour. Today's mix comfortably tops any and every Sunday mix for running time, seven and a half hours of tracks and songs played by us at The Golden Lion at AW61 at the start of April. We played from Saturday afternoon to evening, kicking off at about 2pm with Baz, taking an hour each (my set ended with the AW61 auction and raffle, the first time I've DJed to support an auction of Andrew Weatherall's belongings which included a mug, some cufflinks and his stash tin). At about 7pm we began to play back to back, three tracks each and then two each, rotating on and off. It was brilliant fun, a wonderful experience. The sets weren't recorded but we've done our best to re- create them since. It's not entirely as was played- there are a few things missing that are currently unreleased and which can't be distributed more widely just yet (including one that's missing that may well be one of the tracks for what will hopefully be Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 but I'll say no more about that at the moment). Also, in my three I played David Holmes' remix of Sylvia by Lisa Moorish. I hadn't been paying enough attention to notice that Mark had played it earlier so to avoid repetition I've taken that out and replaced it with David's remix of X- Press 2 (which I had in my bag and was planning on playing later but didn't). Some of our memories are a little sketchy in places but it's fairly close to what we played between 2pm and 9.30pm on Saturday 6th April at The Golden Lion in Todmorden before Sean Johnston and Duncan Gray took over and lifted the roof tiles.
The entire seven and a half hour set is at Mixcloud here. I have an mp3 of it which is a whopping 1GB file and too big to host at my usual file hosting service. I've uploaded into WeTransfer and it will be live for a week from today if you want to download it. I haven't managed to recreate the auction and raffle- that really was a 'you had to be there' thing. It took place between me playing A Mountain Of One's Star (GLOK Starlight Dub) and David Holmes' Emotionally Clear and you'll just have to use your imagination or your memory, but it looked like this...
One of the maddest aspects of my life in recent weeks has been the number of times I've been on social media, scrolling through the needless tidal wave of posts, and seen our album, Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1, pop up- from London to Scotland, from Ireland to Poland, Holland to Toronto, New Zealand and Australia, copies landing all over the globe, Rusty's eye catching artwork propped up next to turntables and record collections everywhere.
The first vinyl pressing of 500 copies sold out in a day in February. The second pressing, a further 500, is close to sold out- there are a few copies at Manchester's Vinyl Exchange and maybe some at Stranger Than Paradise (London) and Monorail (Glasgow). This week a box arrived at Piccadilly Records, a record shop in Manchester I've been frequenting since the 1980s, and there it is again, sitting in the racks at my favourite record shop. Unbelievable in so many ways, an album that started as a chat between three of us last June has become this actual, physical thing, packed from start to finish with amazing music and being played all over the world.
Back in the Golden Age Of Blogging (circa 2004- 2009) Moggieboy (Alan McGregor) wrote the legendary Ripped In Glasgow blog, one of the inspirations for this blog. Moggie posted dance music mainly, some indie and goth (The Cure and The Mary Chain both appeared), plenty of early 90s techno and lots of Andrew Weatherall's music. Around 2011/12 he pulled the plug on Ripped In Glasgow and called it a day and in an act of scorched earth blogging deleted the whole thing too. Not long after he re- appeared with a Ripped In Glasgow Facebook group which quickly became a forum for all things Weatherall. I only joined Facebook because of the RiG Facebook group. When Moggie closed the doors on that group Martin got in touch with me and asked if I wanted to co- run a new Weatherall related Facebook group and that was where, ten years ago this year, The Flightpath Estate was born. No Ripped In Glasgow, no Flightpath Estate, no album. All these things are linked.
I met Moggie/ Alan at AW61 at The Golden Lion a few weekends ago and as has always been the case, meeting bloggers/ internet friends in real life has always been a good thing. They say you shouldn't meet people you only know from the internet and I'm sure it's wise to be cautious (especially if you're in the world of online dating) but every time I've met someone that I've known through the internet hit's been a good experience and I've made many real life friends.
Moggie/ Alan returned to Glasgow after AW61 (he did Todmorden Park Run on the Saturday morning too while some of us were feeling the after effects of the Friday night at The Golden Lion) and this week did his Ripped In Glasgow radio show, an internet radio on Radio Buena Vida. Moggie's show is an hour long, he plays five of the tracks off our album and a few other AW61 related tracks ending with Radio Slave's massive version of The Lunatics (Have Taken Over the Asylum) and talks through his weekend at The Lion with some lovely words about us too, not least 'it's great to meet people off the internet who aren't complete nutters'. You can listen to Ripped In Glasgow getting Ripped In Todmorden here.
One of the treats of this week that keeps repeating has been the arrival of our album, Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1, arriving in physical form through people's front doors. The first copies started to fall onto door mats a week ago and there's been a stream ever since. My copy arrived on Saturday morning an to say it's a been a thrill is an understatement.
When I was younger records had a mystical power, they cast a spell and there was a ritual connected to playing them- the black vinyl and the way it crackled slightly when pulled out of the sleeve, the spiralling groove with the stylus sitting within it, the magical sounds that emanated from this piece of plastic via the arm of the record player and out of the speakers, the sleeve with art or photo on the front and the world of credits, track titles, sleeve notes, and thank yous on the back or inside. And even though DIY culture has been part of the musical world I've been inhabiting since I first started buying records (the philosophy that anyone can make a record was part of both punk and its aftermath and acid house), the idea that a twelve track album in a gatefold sleeve with an array of top quality tracks, all connected to Andrew Weatherall, with my name, picture and sleeve notes written by me would some exist as an actual physical artefact, is a little mind blowing still. That mystical power of black plastic and a cardboard sleeve still exists. It was there last Saturday when I opened the package and slid the album out, Personality Crisis's brilliant artwork in my hands, the gatefold opening up with my sleeve notes on the left and the credits and thanks you's on the right (and a dedication to Isaac too, another proper moment), the pair of discs inside paper inner sleeves... the magic is right there.
The twelve tracks are all absurdly good, everyone involved has sent us music from their top drawer. The opening track is a Two Lone Swordsmen ambient track (not a genre they explored that in that much depth) from a CD promo issued solely in japan twenty years ago called Still My World. We managed to get Rotters Golf Club to license it for our album, something that still has me shaking my heard. Sons Of Slough, Ian Weatherall and Duncan Grey, follow with a chunky, chuggy monster called Red Machine, recorded live at their soundcheck at The Golden Lion last August. Timothy J. Fairplay's Centurion Version, closes side 1, Tim's own tribute to the planned follow up to his and Andrew's Ruled By Passion, Destroyed By Lust album (as The Aphodells), a rocking synth dub track. Flip the disc over and you find Justin Robertson and his Deadstock 33s and a wired, tripped out dub ode to Todmorden and The Golden Lion, a very FXed vocal talking about happy valleys and UFOs (the Todmorden UFO society meets monthly upstairs at the pub. A friend who moved into the area and who attended a meeting was treated with deep suspicion by the regulars who thought he might be from the government). Curtains Twitch On Peaks is followed by the huge sounding Tough On Chug, Tough On The Causes Of Chug by Richard Sen, thumping, driving electronic music. Disc 2 kicks off with Rude Audio's sleek dub techno track Running Wild, driving bass, guitar, keys and rocking dubbed out drums. Jesse Fahnestock's 10:40 comes next, a circus organ riff transplanted from a fairground to acid house with Emilia Harmony's blissed out, otherworldly vocal a siren call. Side 4 has Sean Johnston's Hardway Bros and the self- explanatory Theme For Flightpath Estate (how ace is that? We have our own theme??). Cosmic disco of the kind he plays at ALFOS with a nod to Andrew Weatherall's Walk of Shame within it. The Light Brigade come next (it's a pseudonym due to the artist being contracted Heavenly but the notes on the gatefold credit the writing and production to David Holmes so you can probably make you onw mind up about who it is). Human : Remains sat unfinished and homeless on the shelf for twenty years before being dusted down, sharpened up and released on our album, a track that surges with krautrock drums and layers of synths, keys and bass. We finish with Andy Bell's cover of Smokebelch, a gorgeous, lilting cover version, Andy's fingers moving up and down the strings of his guitar audible, piano and guitars and FX, the perfect way to close the album. Andy began it on the day Andrew died in 2020 and finished it for our album back in October. As I've said and keep saying, a record full of moments that have had me/ us pinching ourselves at almost every stage, from the first week we had a 'yes' to our proposal to this week when the record arrived at our homes.
The album's sold out online. There are some copies available from today at The Golden Lion, at AW61, a weekender to celebrate what would have been Andrew's 61st birthday. Tonight Radioactive Man and David Holmes will rock the Lion with Matt Hum and Rusty and Rotter. There are some copies due to land at Piccadilly Records soon and some more at London's Stranger Than Paradise Records. All these things make me shake my head and pinch myself again. Yes, I will be going to Piccadilly Records to photograph our album in the racks.
In an interview many years ago Andrew Weatherall spoke of what he did being in the spirit of 'the grand amateur'. I think that's us too. Waka, the man who runs The Golden Lion, said on Facebook this week, 'Imagine it: create it'. And that's what we've done.
I can't post any of the songs- we only got the license to put them out on vinyl, so there's no digital release. Some of you may have copies of the album. If you do, I hope you're enjoying it as much as we have been. We've already started contemplating the part of our album's title that says 'Volume 1'.
Tim Fairplay posted his copy on Tuesday with the comment that the first band he ever saw live back in 1992 aged thirteen was Ride, on their Going Blank Again tour, adding it was kinda cool to ned up on the same album as Andy Bell. Both Tim and Andy have new material out elsewhere too. In February Tim released a six track EP/ cassette on Belgian label Pinkman called Convictions That Stick, six slices of Timwave electro, thunderous jacking grooves, squelchy synth sounds and strobe lit keys. It's here.
Andy Bell and the other three members of Ride have just released their third album since reuniting, a twelve song monster called Interplay. It's got guitars and synths, a big sound made for playing live, nods to various 80s and 90s guitar bands and among the soaring chord sequences, towards the end, is this low key beauty, Essaouira, possibly a tribute to the Moroccan town that became a hippy haven in the 60s, with shuffling drums, samples, blissed out guitars and a dreamy, shimmering haze.
Back to work today after a week off. Last week turned out to be a big week. The Sounds From The Flightpath Estate album which me, Baz, Dan, Martin and Mark have been pulling together since the germ of an idea occurred to us last summer, went live on Wednesday and on sale for pre- orders on Thursday. The album is a ten track compilation featuring a previously largely unreleased Two Lone Swordsmen track and nine of brand new recordings from Justin Robertson, Tim Fairplay, Hardway Bros, Sons Of Slough, 10:40, Rude Audio, Richard Sen, a well known and highly regarded producer/ DJ from Belfast under the name The Light Brigade plus Andy Bell's cover of Smokebelch. Every track is gold.
The link to buy the album, double vinyl, 500 copies, went live at 10am on Thursday morning. By the end of the day it had sold out, 420 copies gone. Watching this happen during the day via our screens was incredibly exciting and there was a genuine buzz about the record. The remaining 80s copies have been kept for some physical, face to face sales over the weeks following release.
Matt Hum's twenty two minute mix of the ten tracks at Mixcloud is there to whet the appetite and has been streamed more than 800 times to date. On Friday night Mark Cooper, a friend of the group, the man behind Bedford Falls Players and a superb DJ played tracks from the album at his The 365 Social with our very own Baz providing some interview segments scattered throughout the show. You can hear it here. Word has it BBC Radio 6 might be onto it and some of the tracks might get played there next week. It's all very exciting. Dr Rob, the man behind the Ban Ban Ton Ton blog reviewed Sounds From The Flightpath Estate at Ban Ban Ton Ton on Friday, a review that perfectly captures the album and the spirit of it. You can read that here.
I've been writing guest reviews for Ban Ban Ton Ton intermittently for the last couple of years. Last week I wrote a review of the forthcoming Sedibus album SETI. I posted an advance track last November, SETI Part 3 (the third part of a three piece suite which makes up the second side of the album on vinyl). SETI is a wonderful album made by The Orb's Alex Paterson and ex- Orber Andy Falconer, a record that takes the ambient house sound of those early Orb records, adds some acoustic instrumentation (piano, xylophone, horns) and a lot of space samples about the search for extra- terrestrial intelligence and creates something warm, organic and genuinely awe inspiring. My full review for Ban Ban Ton Ton and Rob's companion piece are here. SETI comes out on Friday.
Sedibus' first album came out in 2021, a four track source of electronic fun and wonder. This track is Toi 1338b, twelve minutes of space age, spaced out Sedibus ambient house.
Toi 1338b is a planet roughly between Neptune and Saturn in size. Toi 1338b is in the Pictor constellation, 1320 light years away from us. It was discovered in the summer of 2019 by a 17 year old New York student named Wolf Cukier, while on an internship at the Goddard Space Centre, and announced in January 2020. I don't know what you did in the your 17th summer- I spent the summer of 1987 working in the record and tape department of WHSmiths and indulging in underage drinking in pubs. Wolf discovered a new planet.
This is a big news announcement! In fact, that probably needs to be in capital letters to reflect the hugeness of this- THIS IS A BIG NEWS ANNOUNCEMENT!
We, The Flightpath Estate, are releasing an album, double vinyl limited to 500 copies, Sounds Of The Flightpath Estate Volume 1, a ten track compilation of artists associated with Andrew Weatherall and the online group The Flightpath Estate (run by five of us and celebrating its tenth birthday this year). There are nine previously unreleased, newly recorded, exclusive to this album tracks and a Two Lone Swordsmen track that has only ever seen the light of day on a very limited promo CD in Japan. It's taken since last summer to pull all this together and there have been times when we have been pinching ourselves about the line up of artists, the quality of the music and the fact that this is going to be an actual record.
The tracklist is hopefully enough to have some of you reaching for the pre- order links (which will go live tomorrow, Thursday 15th February) and getting your credit card out.
Two Lone Swordsmen: The Crescents
Sons Of Slough: Red Machine (Live at The Golden Lion)
Timothy J. Fairplay: Centurion Version
Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s: Curtains Twitch On Peaks
Richard Sen: Tough On Chug, Tough On the Causes Of Chug
Rudio Audio: Running Wild
10: 40: Three Rings
Hardway Bros: Theme For Flightpath Estate
The Light Brigade: Human: Remains
Andy Bell: Smokeblech II
Last summer while me, Martin and Dan were DJing at The Golden Lion we had a chat about a Flightpath Estate compilation album, the sort of chat which seemed like wishful thinking at the time but which sowed seeds with each of us. At first I was thinking of a compilation of already released tracks but that seem to be fraught with complications- licensing tracks from various other labels seemed complex and potentially costly. A compilation of artists who are members of the group and who were friends/ partners/ colleagues/ fans of Andrew's but with previously unreleased music might be easier to pull off. I should point out that our experience of putting an album out was at that point extremely limited (of the five of us, Mark makes music as Rude Audio and has some experience releasing music but the rest of us- me, Dan, Martin and Baz- have close to zero).
The following week we discussed it further and drew up a list of names to approach. Our list included David Holmes, Timothy J. Fairplay, Sean Johnston, Richard Sen, Justin Robertson and Sons Of Slough (Ian Weatherall and Duncan Gray), plus Rude Audio, Jesse from 10: 40 and a few others. We divided them up between us and started making contact, via social media messaging and email. The first name in the list, a well known Belfast based DJ and producer who may have the initials DH but who has to appear pseudonymously due to him being signed to a record label, said yes immediately. Once he was on board we felt we had a chance of getting this together. We contacted Waka and Matt at The Golden Lion, Todmorden, who not only run a pub/ live venue/ portal to another world, but also have a record label- Golden Lion Sounds. They were happy to put our at this point speculative album out. The other names on our list began to respond and say yes too. As summer turned into autumn we began to receive music: a track from the Belfast based DJ/ producer that he'd begun years earlier and now wanted to finish to give to us, a track that is seriously good; dubby music from Justin Robertson and Tim Fairplay, recorded specifically for the album; music from Richard Sen and from Hardway Bros (Sean sent us a track, then another version of it, then scrapped it and went back to the drawing board and sent us a Flightpath Estate theme tune); Sons Of Slough promised us a live track recorded at their gig at The Golden Lion last August; new music from 10: 40 and Rude Audio. All of it genuinely brilliant.
We discussed getting an Andrew Weatherall or Two Lone Swordsmen track. Martin is one of the few people who owns a copy of Still My World, a promo CD released in Japan in 2003 tied into a clothing range and we all loved the ambient track The Crescents. He contacted Andrew's manager Pete Lawton and former Swordsman Keith Tenniswood, and we got their approval and blessing to use it, pending discovery of the master. Ian Weatherall gave us his approval, as did Lizzie, Andrew's partner. I contacted Andy Bell (of Ride and GLOK) and asked if he was interested. He replied to say he had a cover of Smokebelch that he started the day Andrew died but hadn't finished but to keep in touch. Then he went on tour to the USA with Ride. Our deadline for music was approaching (we were keen to have the tracks in our hands, compiled, and ready for mastering for vinyl by November '23 in an attempt to get the album out spring 2024). I emailed Andy on the off chance and the following day he replied to say I'd given him the nudge he needed and he sent me his now completed, stunning cover of Smokebelch. Now we had ten tracks, and a clear idea of which ones should open and close the album (Two Lone Swordsmen and Andy Bell respectively). Dan contacted Rusty, an artist and designer who goes by the name of Personality Crisis, about sleeve art (and getting that back plus the gatefold inner was another genuinely amazing moment). I wrote some sleeve notes. We did the legal stuff. GLS got it mastered. Last week test pressings arrived at The Golden Lion. Now the sleeves are going to print and the records are going to press and with any luck we'll have them out in April (which happily will coincide with the AW61 celebrations at The Golden Lion).
At times while doing this we've felt like a bunch of amateurs chancing our collective arm and making it up as we go along- but it turns out that things like this can actually happen. It's one of the most exciting things I've ever been involved in. It still makes me shake my head in disbelief that in a couple of months it will be an actual physical record with this line up of artists, available to buy. The artists who have donated their music, the people who've helped us out along the way with advice and contacts, the team at The Golden Lion, the enthusiasm from a very select group of people who've known about this until last night- massive thanks to each and every one of you.
Matt from The Golden Lion has done a twenty two minute promo mix of the ten tracks sequenced together, if you need any further inducement to part with your money. You can listen to it at Mixcloud- find it here.
Our compilation album, Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1, is available to pre- order tomorrow from Golden Lion Sounds and/ or the GLS Bandcamp. There will be 500 copies, no repress, no digital, vinyl only. Any proceeds from sales will go to The Lion and to Andrew's preferred charities (Crisis, Shelter and Thrombosis UK). Not only is it therefore a good thing for a good cause, it's actually a really good album.
