A year ago David Holmes released Blind On A Galloping Horse, an album that over four sides of vinyl and seventy minutes of music pulled together many of the political, emotional, cultural and psychological strands that seemed to come together in 2023. Protest in the face useless governments, , self- reliance, a roll call of the lost, the ongoing influence and spirit of Andrew Weatherall, the voices of refugees, humanity and community, the need to find the space and peace to clear one's head from all the noise and clutter that is out there. A beacon maybe, a call to arms perhaps, a face looking back at you from the crowd. I've played it again several times recently and it still hits all those spots.
The songs from Blind On A Galloping Horse have been remixed, a slew of like minded souls refitting David's songs and Raven Violet's vocals into new sounds and shapes. There are over thirty of them, every single one worth hearing. It seemed to me that as we approach the end of 2024, a year on from the Galloping Horse, a Sunday mix of some of those remixes was in order.
I featured each song only once, avoiding multiple versions- there were multiple remixes of several of the songs and all of the highest quality. There's some real high tempo bangers too which I held back from until part way through this mix when Timmy Stewart raises the bpms after a slow burning first twenty five minutes, and when I think of the remixes that didn't make this mix- Heidi and Lovefingers, Rich Lane, Decius, Sonic Boom, X- Press 2, Cosmodelica, Skymas, Daniel Avery- I think a volume 2 might be in order some day.
There's more Holmes available at NTS this week, David's monthly God's Waiting Room show, two hours of the best music money can buy- this month includes his new remix of Five Green Moons, Spiritualized, V/Z and Poly High School Band's version of Midnight Cowboy. Listen here.
Yeah x 3 (The Vendetta Suite's Reason To Drift Remix)
Blind On A Galloping Horse (Sons Of Slough)
Agitprop 13 (GLOK Remix)
Hope Is The Last Thing To Die (Timmy Stewart's 11th Hour Remix)
It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love (Hardway Bros Live At SSL Dub)
Stop Apologising (Horse Meat Disco Vocal Remix)
Necessary Genius (Phil Kieran Vocal Remix)
Emotionally Clear is one of Blind's slower, more blissed out songs but with several questions at its heart- do you believe in the absence of evidence? Do you believe in unjust punishment? Do you believe in cognitive dissonance? On her Ammonite Remix Amy Spencer breaks the song down into its barest bones, a spectral, whispery, ambient gauze with Raven Violet's vocals looped, FXed and chopped up.
The Vendetta Suite is Belfast's Gary Irwin, a veteran Holmes associate and the in house engineer at Exploding Plastic Inevitable studio and label. This remix, one of a pair, keeps the drifting, ambient feel going. The Vendetta Suite's album from 2021, The Kempe Portal Stone, is well worth your time and attention if you haven't heard it. 'Got my mind on freedom/ And one foot out the door', Raven coos, and then the line taken from David's track from a GLS 10" from 2021, 'love is a mystery'.
Sons Of Slough (Ian Weatherall and Duncan Gray) bring the dub to the album's title track, a dissection of the world and its madness sent to the dub section via rim shots, a slowed down bassline, melodica, and also stir in a deeply Power, Corruption And Lies-era New Order feel.
Andy Bell in his GLOK guise took Agitprop 13 and kept things weird and experimental, bass and synth with rumbling rhythms and layers of backing vocals- it builds insistently, more and more coming to the foreground.
Hope Is The Last Thing to Die was the opening shot of the Blind On A Galloping Horse album, released as a single back in September 2021, a response to the incompetence and idiocy of governments in the face of modern crises, Covid and climate change. It lit up autumn 2021 for me and has done so repeatedly since. Timmy Stewart, another Belfast connection who DJs and produces as Black Bones, turns David's protest song and call to resistance into something tough and metallic. The rat tat tat of the snare breaks through, like a pipe being tapped with a monkey wrench.
Sean Johnston's remixes of It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love are among his best Hardway Bros remixes, that cosmic/ ALFOS groove spinning out onto the floor with a lovely, brain twisting distorted synth riff and disco arpeggios.
Stop Apologising is the most direct song on the album, a genuine three minute glam pop anthem, Raven singing of self reliance, the importance of being grounded and 'the wonders of psychedelic therapy'. Horse Meat Disco turn everything up to eleven, add an enormous glam disco stomp, Goldfrapp amped up to the max, big piano chords, and keep it all going and going and going... 'Stop apologising for things you never done/ Stop catastrophising put your feet back on the ground'.
Necessary Genius is David's tribute to the misfits, artists, dreamers, outsiders and radicals who make the culture, a roll call of the great and good- Serge and Jane, John Coltrane, Angela Davis, Samuel Beckett, Ennio Morricone- and particularly some of those who we have lost in recent years- Terry Hall, Andrew Weatherall, Sinead O'Connor. Phil Kieran is another Northern Irish DJ, musician, producer and remixer and his remix of Necessary Genius is a blinder, full on basement club, messy dance floor music and the perfect fit for those people listed in the lyrics.
Finally it is here- 30th November. It feels it's been hanging over me for ages. November is a double punch- 23rd November is Isaac's birthday and we wait for that to arrive with everything it brings and then there's a week where we wait again, for the anniversary of his death. He died on 30th November 2021, three years ago today. The two being tied together so closely is very difficult. We've all had a very tough week with some really difficult and gruelling days where our emotions have been very close to the surface and coping with every day things- work for instance- has been really hard. After today there will be some respite I think, some relief from it all, before we're flung into Christmas. It's incredible that it's now three whole years since he went. It feels like no time at all in some ways. Time really is relative.
Isaac died in a side room off a Covid ward in Wythenshawe Hospital, at about quarter to two in the afternoon. The three of us were with him. I can remember it all so vividly. The previous day we'd spoken to a consultant. It was a Covid ward. He'd seen, he told us, a lot of people die. I asked him how it would happen, what would physically happen to Isaac when the end came and it was pretty much exactly as he described it. Some time afterwards, a few weeks maybe, lying in bed and unable do much except drink tea and scroll aimlessly on my phone, I saw an article in one of the broadsheet newspapers with a headline that said scientists had discovered whether when we die our lives really do flash before our eyes. I didn't click through and read it but it made me think about what Isaac would have seen in those last moments. Good things I hope.
I've said before here that the time since his death has sometimes seen him swallowed up by it. By him I mean Isaac, who he was, the person he was and became, the things he and we did together. It is the grief, the loss, the full fucking horror of your son dying aged 23, gone in less than a week, suddenly, wrenched away from us. It is the massive ball of grief, the knot of anxiety I carry round inside me. It sits inside my chest and stomach, expanding and contracting, sometimes a thing that I've learned to live with and sometimes, like this week/ month, something that engulfs me. Trying to keep sight of him when you're overcome by it is not always easy. We talk about him and smile when we mention the things he did or said, laugh about the stuff we got up to. It hurts less some of the time. And sometimes it kicks me about, makes me cry in public places, makes me feel like I'm carrying a massive weight around with me. After today it will shrink a little for a while- I think it will anyway. Today is a milestone (or millstone) to get past, another date to see the back of, another end to a few weeks that just have to be endured. November is a fucker.
In the time since Isaac died there are songs which have changed their meaning for me. Some of them are songs that I knew really well before he died and then when listened to at some point in the days since early 2022 have shifted, the words taking on a new layer of meaning. One of those is this one by Nick Drake (who coincidentally died fifty years ago last week aged just 26, the age Isaac would have been last Saturday).
'Cello Song opens side two of Five Leaves Left, Nick Drake's debut album, released in 1969. Fast but melancholy folky, finger picked guitar, a cello and some hand drums, all recorded up close and with real immediacy by Joe Boyd. Nick songs in that whispery, very English voice. I don't know what the word are about, what Nick meant by them. They are very poetic, very literate, not really contemporary to 1969's lyrical concerns at all. There was a point when I heard the song and had been to see Isaac at the cemetery- I don't remember exactly when, summer 2022 maybe- when it became a completely new song for me, it had a new meaning for me. Halfway through the second verse Nick sings...
'But while the earth sinks to its grave/ You sail to the sky/ On the crest of a wave'
The third and final verse continues...
'So forget this cruel world/ Where I belong/ I'll just sit and wait and sing my song/ And if one day you should see me in a crowd/ Lend a hand and lift me/ To your place in the cloud'.
I don't need to unpick that do I.
At Isaac's funeral, at the graveside, we chose this poem to be read by the celebrant- The Dead by Billy Collins...
'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'
I think something in 'Cello Song reminded me of The Dead. Both bring me some comfort.
I've been going through Nick Cave's back catalogue too. There's lots to find in there. Playing CDs in the car while driving to and from work recently this song really struck me anew...
Written way back in 1990, when I was only 20 with no idea of what was to come, this song was on The Good Son and was perhaps the first mature Nick Cave song. Piano and organ, with Nick at the fore and the three Bad Seeds (Mick Harvey, Blixa Bargeld and Barry Adamson) providing angelic backing vocals, The Ship Song is full of metaphor and is clearly a song about romantic love, doomed love maybe, love as struggle; but, as it has swelled and filled the space inside my battered Peugeot car this week in the cold dark mornings and evenings of fucking November it has given me something, I don't know what, something to hold on to.
'Come sail your ships around me/ And burn your bridges down/ You are a little mystery to me/ Every time you come around'.
Thanks for sticking with me if you've got this far and thanks to everyone who does respond to my grief and Isaac posts. I know they're a bit heavy sometimes- I wouldn't blame anyone for not wanting to read this first thing on a Saturday morning. The comments and best wishes from the people who are part of this online community really do mean a lot.
Onwards and upwards eh? Always onwards. Aiming upwards.
No forty minute Sunday mix from me today- I've been away this week and haven't had much time. Instead, enjoy this sublime two hours from Daniel Avery and The Early Bird Show at NTS from last week. Daniel plays an early morning selection of songs and tracks, joining the dots between ambient, indie, trip hop and techno, with PJ Harvey, some of his own music, Sinead O'Connor, Two Lone Swordsmen, Holden Federico, George Clanton, James K, Deftones, Death In Vegas, Everything But The Girl, Skee Mask, Smashing Pumpkins, Interpol, Solvent, and Nulifer Yanya all making appearances. The full tracklist is here and you can listen here. Two hours well spent.
I've posted two different Daniel Avery mixes previously. Both are still available to download. In November 2022 I put together a forty minute mix of remixes Daniel has done of other artists- it's quite intense and thumpy.
Leaving Laurel: Winter In The Woods (Daniel Avery Remix)
David Holmes: Hope Is The Last Thing To Die (Daniel Avery Remix)
Mandy, Indiana: Alien 3 (Daniel Avery Remix)
Joshua James: Amber Rush (Daniel Avery Remix)
Confidence Man: Feels Like A Different Thing (Daniel Avery Remix)
Daniel Avery: Lone Swordsman (Chris Carter Remix)
Previous to that, in February 2022 when I started this Sunday mix series, the second forty minute mix I posted was a Daniel Avery one, thirty minutes of echo, reverb, FX and emotive ambient/ techno.
2023 has been a year of 23s for me in many ways. I've written before about the number and its occurrence, its relationship to us since Isaac died and the tattoos the three of us got done in October. This is my end of year post, a list pulling together what has been the best of 2023 for me. Inevitably there are 23 entries (but much more than 23 artists, singles and albums) and as I was writing it I realised that today is 23rd December (I planned to post this today before thinking about what date it would be). I have heard so much new music this year and so much of it has been really good- my long list of albums of the year came to thirty albums without much thought, a new album for every ten days of the year. And while much of this year has been a real struggle with grief and the long aftermath of Isaac's death, I've had some great nights out at events that were (almost) entirely about the music- the grief never goes away, it sits inside me or hovers above me but music- recorded music, live music- often has the power to transport me in a way nothing else does.
This is a list of my favourite musical things of this year. It's not objective. I haven't heard everything I should have done and I'm sure there are records that I'd love if I had more time and more money. Usually I find something early into the new year that instantly screams 'best of last year' to me. Also, ranking art and declaring one album 'better' than another is inherently subjective but end of year lists are fun and looking back and putting it all into one place is a good way to mark the end of the year. The year of 23.
Twenty Three: Venue Of The Year
No contest here- The Golden Lion in Todmorden and a fitting place to start the list. I've enjoyed several superb nights out at The Lion this year with the honour of DJing on a few occasions. ALFOS in June was very hot and memorable, David Holmes' album launch party in November was a 2023 highlight,
Dan Donovan’s Casbah Club in August (sadly Paul Simonon was unable to attend), our Sabresonic celebration and Q&A with Jagz
Kooner and Gary Burns and Jagz’s DJ set (videos of the Q&A to follow shortly), the Tici Taci Party in August with Sean Johnston and Duncan Gray DJing downstairs after a blistering set from Sons Of Slough upstairs, Red
Snapper rattling the fittings in November and the legendary, untouchable AW60 in April with a beautiful cast of artists and revellers and a huge headlining set from Justin Robertson.
Twenty Two: Label Of The Year
There are lots of independent labels putting out loads of good music, keeping things in house and small scale- not that there's anything small scale about the music- with digital and physical releases. These three have kept me busy all year with singles, EPs and albums, one offs and compilations- a three way tie for first place. Leeds based label Paisley Dark has put out releases by Warriors of The Dysthoteque, Jay- Son, The Machine Soul, Hogt I Tak and James Rod, all top notch electronic psychedelia. Duncan Gray's Tici Taci has had a year long celebration of ten years in the business with a tenth birthday party at the Golden Lion, a series of compilations, Decades Volumes 1 to 4 with outstanding new releases from The
Long Champs' 'Nostalgia For The Future', Jack Butters' ‘Shake It Off’ and singles and EPs from Mystic
Thug, Uj Pa Gaz, Viper Patrol and Mr BC. Along with those two is Exeter's Mighty Force, the label that back in the early 90s put out Aphex Twin's first 12" single, reborn for the digital age. Mighty Force have sent all of these into the ether and all are excellent electronic music- Yorkshire Machines ‘Firing Up’, ‘Fluffy Inside’ by Nylon Corners, M- Paths' ‘Hope’ AP Organism's EP ‘Space Docks And Moon Rocks’ David Harrow's ‘Jitter’ and ‘Described Spaces’ by KAMS. Long may all three labels continue.
Twenty One: Gig Of The Year
I had the pleasure to see some great gigs this year, several of which lived long in the memory. Spiritualized at Manchester's New Century Hall were genuinely breathtaking. Red Snapper at the Golden Lion kicked up a storm of cosmic jazz, trip hop and downtempo. Eyes Of Others at The Castle on Oldham Street were great, another great Heavenly Records artist. Chris Rotter and Andy Bell's two man set on Saturday afternoon at AW60 playing songs from Andrew Weatherall's A Pox On The Pioneers was a gem.
But the win goes to A Certain Ratio who I saw live three times this year. They toured twice, released a superb new album, 1982, and an EP, celebrating 45 years of making music and they're still
forging ahead with new music and ideas. Their gig at New Century Hall earlier on this year, the free
one outdoors at Factory International in June and the two set 45th
anniversary celebration at Band On The Wall at the start of this month were all brilliant, a dance floor blend of youth and experience, post- punk/ punk funk/ jazz funk, the old and the new.
Twenty: Compilation Of The Year
I've already mentioned Tici Raci's four volumes of Decade, several hours of chuggy sci fi, nu disco, house, techno sparkle. Aficionado's 25 Of Aficionado is a celebration of a Manchester institution, the anything goes, genre free spirit of Jason Boardman and Moonboots pressed onto four sides of vinyl is right up there with Colleen Murphy's Balearic Breakfast Volume 2 not far behind. But the stand out compilation of the year was Richard Sen's Dream The Dream: UK Techno, House And Breakbeat 1990- 1994, a perfectly pulled together and superbly sequenced set of tracks from the early 90s that show what a fertile period that was and how much was going on in the underground.
Some of my favourite tracks of this year have been edits- do edits count as new music? Or old music? New versions of old music, rejigged for the dancefloor. Jezebell's Jezebalearic Beats Vol 1 is a masterclass in this area and will appear further on in this list. Jezebell's Diavol Edits Vol 7 as a four track joy. Beyonder's Present Case Edits Vol 1 was a stunner, not least Hardway Bros edit of Sleaford Mods' Mork And Mindy, the M&M Acid Edit. Peza's Rock The Spectre, a layering of Joe Strummer's vocal from Rock the Casbah over Mystic Thug also hit the spot for me. But just pipping all of these for me were the pair of edits on the A- side of a recent vinyl only 12" by Coyote, their reworking of Monsoon's Ever So Lonely as Lonely and Gil Scott Heron as Western Revolution lighting up December for me.
Eighteen: Andy Bell
Pretty soon from here there will be some proper lists and less wittering from me but first Andy Bell who at first glance seemed to have had a quiet year after all his solo albums and GLOK activity in 2020- 2022. Even so he put in a tour, released a lovely ambient/ free jazz mini- album with Masal, Tidal Love Numbers, and a ten minute live cover version of Neu!'s Hallogallo (also with Masal), a live in session album for Electronic Sound called Gateway Mechanics wearing his GLOK hat, two sides of soaring kosmische electronics and guitars, a bunch of remixes for other artists and put out a fanzine, Volume, Fuzz And Delay (which contained my review of his gig at Gulliver's in April 2022. Which, as the man on The Fast Show used to say, was nice). The fanzine came with a download code for three hours of live recordings from Andy's Space Station gigs, live versions of songs from his solo albums and as GLOK, all of which are stunning.
Seventeen: EPs Of The Year
All of these wereessential listening for me at various points this year, all of them somewhere between the single and the album, with Sons Of Slough's chug and cosmic wallop recorded live at Convenanza in September, Jezebell's messy day and night out in the sun with Siouxsie on Trading Places, the three remixes of Unloved's Polychrome album, Justin Robertson's rocking dub especially, and at the top the wondrous Magic Hour EP by Wigan's Mark Peters, resplendent on 10" yellow vinyl.
11. Whitelands ‘Remixes’
10: Steve Queralt and Michael Smith ‘Sun Moon Town Versions’
9: Yorkshire Machines ‘Firing Up’
8: Woodleigh Research Facility: Apparently Solo 4 Borderlands
7: Sons Of Slough ‘Live at The Castle’
6: Chug Norris ‘Dark and Sweaty’
5: Richard Sen ‘Dream the Dream’ remixes
4: Andy Bell and Masal ‘Tidal Love Numbers’
3: Jezebell ‘Trading Places’
2: Unloved ‘Polychrome’ Remixes
1: Mark Peters ‘The Magic Hour’ EP
Sixteen: Albums Of The Year Numbers 30 to 8
30: Laurel Halo 'Atlas'
29. Red Snapper 'Live At The Moth Club'
28: Young Fathers 'Young Fathers'
27: Dicky Continental ‘Uh?’
26: House of All 'House Of All'
25: Goat 'Medicine'
24: Boxheater Jackson ‘Indigenous State Of Mind’
23: Konformer ‘Konformer’
22: A Certain Ratio: 1982
21: Slowdive ‘Everything Is Alive’
20: The Coral ‘Sea Of Mirrors’
19: David Harrow ‘Rare Earth Technology’
18: Steve Cobby ‘The New Law Of Righteousness’
17: HiFi Sean and David McAlmont ‘Happy Ending’
16: Woodleigh Research Facility ‘Phonox Nights’
15: Andy Bell ‘Gateway Mechanics’
14: The Thief Of Time ‘Where Do I Belong?’
13: Coyote ‘I Hear A New World’
12. Grian Chatten ‘Chaos For The Fly’
11: Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright ‘Psychedelic Science’
10: Jezebell ‘Jezebellearic Beats Volume 1’
9: Richard Norris ‘Oracle Sound Volume 1’
8: Yo La Tengo ‘This Stupid World’
Fifteen: Singles Of The Year Numbers 23 to 8
23: Four Tet ‘Three Drums’
22: Woodentops ‘Ride A Cloud’ and Coyote remix
21: Hurdy Gurdy and the Local Psycho ‘The Hurdy Gurdy Song’
20: X- Press 2 ‘Phasing You Out’ David Holmes remix
19: Rude Audio ‘The Grinning’
18: Warriors Of The Dysthoteque and Joe Duggan ‘Fitzroy
Avenue’
13: Islandman ‘Godless Ceremony’ plus the Hardway Bros Remix
12: A Man Called Adam ‘The Girl With A Hole In Her Heart’
11: Aphex Twin ‘Black Box Recorder 21f’
10: Psychederek ‘Test Card Girl’
9: Jo Sims ‘Bass- The Final Frontier’ David Holmes remix
8: Katy J Pearson ‘Willow’s Song’ Richard Norris remix
Fourteen: Album Of The Year #7 Eyes
Of Others ‘Eyes Of Others’
Eyes Of Others debut album is a heady collage of electronics, synthpop, dub, acid house, early New Order and John Bryden's singular world view.
Thirteen: Album Of The Year #6African Head Charge ‘A Trip To Bolgatanga’
Bonjo and Sherwood back on the African Head Charge express, ten songs built over Bonjo's drumming, chanting and dub.
Twelve: Album Of The Year #5 10:40 ‘Transition Theory’
I first heard Jesse Fahnestock's music a couple of years ago, an edit of Spacemen 3. This album, a complete piece of work, each track containing the seeds of the next one, an eleven song trip through the 10:40 world roaming in the spaces between ambient house, chuggy electronics, indie dance, psychedelia, bleepy dub and atmospherics, floating in inner/ outer space.
Eleven: Album Of The Year #4 JIM
‘Loves Makes Magic’
Surprise of the year for me, a Balearic song based album that lit up summer- the hot, sunny summer we didn't really get this year.
Ten: Album Of The Year #3 Sonic
Boom and Panda Bear ‘Reset In Dub’ by Adrian Sherwood
Sherwood and the On U Sound collectiveproving they've lost none of their power, sending Sonic Boom and Panda Bear into echo heaven.
Nine: Album Of The Year #2 James
Holden ‘Imagine This Is a High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities’
This album came out in March, an album that is endlessly innovative and entrancing. Holden recorded it partly as a memory of 90s rave and the free party movement but it works way beyond nostalgia, twelve tracks that never become predictable, never settle, always looking to twist and move somewhere else, melodies and squiggles, birdsong and synths. I played it again recently and it sounded as fresh as it did in March.
Eight: Single Of The Year #7 Cole
Odin and Marshall Watson ‘Just A Daydream Away’ versions plus Hardway Bros
remix
Shimmering indie dance from the West Coast of the USA, in two versions, both equally great and a wonderful Hardway Bros remix serving up ten minutes of cosmic indie chug (a trick Sean repeated with remixes of Holy Youth Movement and Islandman's Godless Ceremony.
Seven: Single Of The Year #6 Electric
Blue Vision ‘Other Skies’ plus remixes
Jesse Fahnestock has been on fire in 23, a flood of music and ideas (see above, number 13). Other Skies is a song that has that magic, the magic that transports and transcends, Emilia Harmony's vocal about being lost and going home a key part of it. The remixes, all three of them, sent it into new places with the Hardway Bros and Monkton's dub version bringing the bass and melodica front and centre.
Six: Single Of The Year #5 Khidja
‘Do You Know This Record Marius?
Two weeks ago this wouldn't have been here but it shoved its way in and won't let go- trippy, spinning electronic psychedelia from Romania that has been on a loop at home and in the car.
Five: Single Of The Year #4 Dirt
Bogarde ‘Heavy Blotter’
Dirt has provided several tracks this year that have pushed me forwards but this one has an oomph, an electric charge and a big acid house sound that rattles my speakers and hits me in the chest.
Four: Single Of The Year #3 Matt
Gunn ‘Learning By Loops’ Bedford Falls Players Remix
I wrote about this last week, a remix that has been in my ears since the early summer, and one I'm not remotely tired of hearing. A crunch of drums, long vocal sample about binary systems, time travel, the voice of Jesus and shit like this with a ringing guitar part looped in and out.
Three: Sinead O'Connor and Single Of The Year #3 David Holmes 'Necessary Genius'
There have been a lot of high profile deaths this year, the losses of David Crosby, Tom Verlaine, Bobby Charlton, Jane Birkin, Steve Mackey, Spot, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Mark Stewart, Andy Rourke and Shane McGowan all moments of sadness. But Sinead's death in July was shocking and brought a wave of heartfelt tributes and genuine bereavement from many, her death, coming a year after the loss of her youngest son Shane. I read her book Rememberings last year and the knowledge that Shane would die after the book was written made reading it very moving.
Back in July when I posted my own tribute to her I included a link to an edit Rich Lane did of Sinead's song Jackie. A friend sent my blogpost to David Holmes who in response sent me the track he played at his own tribute to Sinead at NTS radio, his remix of Orbital's Belfast with Sinead's vocal from Nothing Compares 2U over the top. David also then got in touch with Rich and asked for a copy of Jackie to play when DJing (which he did and which David played at The Golden Lion in November, a moment that made me smile when it came over the sound system and I thought about how it got there). David also then asked Rich to do a remix for him which should be coming out soon. Sinead's face was on the art for David's Necessary Genius single and a print included with the Blind On A Galloping Horse album. She's been a presence all over the second half of 2023, a beautiful and fearless soul and it seemed right to include her in this list. Hopefully the album she recorded with David Holmes will see the light of day eventually.
Necessary Genius was close to the top in my list of singles of 2023, a rollcall of talent and inspiration with glorious synths and drum machines. But it missed out to this...
Two: Single Of The Year- Fontaines DC 'Cello Song'
I thought long and hard about this, about whether I really think a cover version should be my single of the year and whether given almost all the music above is electronic, a rock 'n' roll rumble in the top spot is right- but in the end it is the song I've gone back to time and time again. Nick Drake's original is my favourite song of his, a song of acoustic and poetic beauty, and in some ways the words have become associated with Isaac for me in the two years since he died. Fontaines DC take the song and do something new with it, a squeal of feedback, a rockabilly drumbeat, acres of Dublin street swagger and Grian Chatten's deep hit of voice breathing new meaning into Nick's words. Back in July I put together a forty minute mix of Nick Drake songs which opened with Nick's version and closed with Fontaines. Here it is again.
One: Album Of The Year- David Holmes 'Blind On A Galloping Horse'
The album I've been waiting for since the first single from it appeared in 2021, Hope Is The Last Thing To Die. Fourteen songs long, seventy minutes of music, a proper album from start to finish with contributions from Keith Tenniswood and Tim Fairplay, the voice of Raven Violet and the spirits of Andrew Weatherall and Sinead O'Connor. Songs that take in the personal and the political, the emotional and the righteous, the psychedelic and the electronic, over four sides of vinyl housed in a beautifully designed sleeve. Everything we wanted and more and as someone said to me, exactly the album we needed at exactly the right time.
There were a slew of remixes to support the singles, all of them worth hearing and some of them right up there with the best music released this year, a case of more is sometimes more. Shout outs to Sonic Boom and Panda Bear's remix of Yeah x 3 and both Vendetta Suite's versions of the same song, Colleen Murphy's acid disco remixes of Stop Apologising, and the remixes of Necessary Genius by Decius (a riot in a sweaty basement), Lovefingers (a slowed down piano dub groove) and especially Phil Kieran's eight minute electronic kraut hammer remix.
I was back at Todmorden's Golden Lion on Saturday night for the launch party for the new David Holmes album Blind On A Galloping Horse, the man himself DJing for four hours to what was once again a packed and enthusiastic pub. I've said it before and it never fails to strike me, the absolute wonder that is The Golden Lion. From the outside, a fairly ordinary looking pub, standing by a canal in a northern town nestled in the hills where Yorkshire meets Lancashire. On the inside, another world. Holmes arrives and begins slowly, some floaty sax easing us in, the red lights already bathing the pub in a warm glow and the mirrorball throwing sparkles round the room. Things heat up fairly quickly, the heartbeat thump working its way in. This thumper courtesy of Golden Bug and The Liminanas is played...
... and is followed by David's own remix of Jo Sims' Bass (The Final Frontier), a record I've played on repeat this year. David then drops in the instantly recognisable riff from Sign 'O' The Times and Prince's Fairlight synth and lyrics about Aids, the space shuttle and Hurricane Annie filling the pub.
Holmes pitches things more and more for dancing with tracks from Khidja, Roe Deers and Pete Shelley and then, a slight easing up with the appearance of Senor Coconut's Trans Europe Express (I should add here I'm indebted to Martin and his Shazam app- my memory would not have recalled much of this amount of detail). There are tracks by Soft Rocks, Decius, Rich Lane's edit of Sinead O'Connor, Patrick Cowley, there is She's A Rainbow (I'm not sure about this, it wasn't the World Of Twist cover but didn't sound exactly like The Stones either), and this slinky disco chugger with happy/ sad house piano chords from 2012 by Roberto Rodriguez...
It went on and on, The Human League's The Things That Dreams Are Made Of provoking much joy, and there was much more music besides, a proper night out with a lovely, friendly crowd and everyone there to dance, culminating in the ten minute epic from this year, Radio Slave's reworking of Audion's Mouth To Mouth, intense, rumbling, ecstatic techno with an irresistible ascending synthline that buzzes like a jar of wasps.
David and Raven Violet's album has been on repeat since arriving at my house on Friday. It's a proper album, a complete piece of work with lyrical concerns and themes that tie the fourteen songs together across four sides of vinyl and seventy five minutes. The four singles released from it so far have all been huge songs for me- Hope Is The Last Thing To Die and It's Over If We Run Out Of Love lit up 2021 and 2022 and Necessary Genius, a rollcall and tribute to those who have gone who inspire him from Weatherall to Samuel Beckett, from Angela Davis to Sinead O'Connor, has done the same to 2023. Recent single Stop Apologising too. The rest of the songs stand alongside those four from the long opener When People Are Occupied Resistance Is Justified, a song surely born in David's upbringing in Belfast and directly relevant to the world today. Scattered throughout are the voices of refugees, speaking in their own languages with gentle synths and FX behind them, the voices of the repressed and downtrodden given space next to David's words and Raven's voice.
Emotionally Clear and Yeah x 3 show a gentler, poppier side to the album. On the former Raven sings, 'Do you believe in the absence of evidence/ Do you believe in unjust punishment? Do you believe in cognitive dissonance?, and then the chorus erupts into a girl group swell of bells and synths. On the latter chiming synths and the sound of heads clearing and clouds parting, optimism and the word 'yeah', one of the oldest sounds in pop music.
There are several nods to Andrew Weatherall, David paying tribute to his friend and inspiration: the title of an instrumental called And You Will Know Me By The Smell Of Onions, lighter than air synths, piano and a pattering drum machine; a cover of Laugh Myself To Sleep with Timothy J. Fairplay's guitars adding some post- punk/ Mick Jones fire to Raven's voice and Weatherall's words (from Andrew's unreleased second solo album of the same name); and the repeated line in the song Too Muchroom, Andrew's comment about 'if you're not living on the edge you're taking up too much room'.
The album flows through to side four and the final three songs, that show the breadth of what David's created with Blind On A Galloping Horse. Tyranny Of The Talentless calms the pace, a slo mo drum track and lyrics about 'the ashtray of history'. It's followed by Love In The Upside Down, a tripped out monster led by fuzz bass and splinters of guitar, a giddy, swirling psychedelia filled with a sense of momentum, of other worlds, of awakening and possibility. Quite a rush.
That just leaves the title track to carry us home, the sound of the end of a journey and finding strength in song and community despite the horrors of the world outside. Over strings and padded bass Raven sings, 'They will push you out/ And pull you in/ Whatever happens now/ We mustn't mustn't let them win', and the track fades with another speaking voice, this time I think speaking in Gaelic- a song about personal resistance, completing the loop back to the start.
Blind On A Galloping Horse a beautiful packaged album as well, as all proper albums should be, with photos by Belfast street photographer Bill Kirk and artwork and text by British artist Jimmy Turrell, and a print of Sinead and the lyrics to Necessary Genius. As an album it feels like a statement, a personal account, a record that David had to make. Sonically, musically, philosophically, politically and emotionally, it feels very much like the album we need at this point in 2023, a response to both the inner and outer worlds, a call to action but one that also says we can still find hope out there somewhere, if we look in the right places.
The idea of Weatherall Remix Friday when I started it a few months ago, was to feature some of the less well known, less celebrated Andrew Weatherall remixes. Andrew produced hundreds of remixes during his lifetime- under his own name (with a range of studio conspirators including Hugo Nicolson, Steve Boardman, Timothy J. Fairplay and Nina Walsh), with Sabres Of Paradise and with Two Lone Swordsmen. There are some artists he came back to time after time, remixing their songs across the decades- Primal Scream for one and David Holmes for another. David's first solo album since 2008's The Holy Pictures is out today on Heavenly, a record titled Blind On A Galloping Horse, one which I've been eagerly waiting for since Hope Is The Last Thing To Die came out in October 2021. There's a launch party night at The Golden Lion on Saturday night with David DJing. The last time he played there, in October last year, was very memorable indeed. Hopefully Saturday will be similarly roof raising.
Andrew's remixes of David, in reverse order, take in his versions of Unloved (Devils Angels from 2019, a Weatherall remix of When A Woman Is Around from 2016 and two remixes of Guilty Of Love in 2015), the wonderful Andrew Weatherall remix of I Heard Wonders (from 2008) and then before those two remixes of Gone, a song with Sarah Cracknell on vocals from Homer's 1995 debut solo album This Film's Crap, Let's Slash The Seats (an album recorded with Andrew's Sabres Of Paradise partners Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns co- producing. Jagz, Gary and David were three members of the four members of a 1993 one off group/ record Four Boy One Girl Action which I might come back to at some point soon). Lots of links and connections between them then resulting in lots of music. It's the remixes of Gone I thought I'd focus on here today, both dating from 1996.
This Film's Crap... was a double album, very much made under the influence of being active for half a decade in 1990s club music, a dark, moody, downtempo album with nods to techno, trip hop and house and the signs of David's future work in film soundtracks there to see. Gone, with Saint Etienne's Sarah on vocals, was an obvious single, one of the few tracks on the album with a vocal, Sarah lamenting, 'I gonna hide/ She don't even know/ You can never go home anymore'.
Andrew and Keith Tenniswood had just begun to release records as Two Lone Swordsmen. They released their first full length album, The Fifth Mission (Return To The Flightpath Estate), the same year and these remixes sound like they came from similar sessions and times. Gone came out as a single with various remixes in March 1996, several months before The Fifth Mission in August. TLS had released a pair of 12" singles- The Third Mission and The Tenth Mission- ahead of the album, but the Gone remixes are some of the first fruits of the Swordsmen sound.
First Night Without Charge is a sublime, subtle, atmospheric early Swordsmen, those submerged and subaqua TLS sounds and motifs appearing, with double bass bassline and breakbeat taking the lead- not dissimilar to the sound and feel of The Fifth Mission. Sarah's voice is nowhere to be found- as Jagz and Gary confirmed at our Sabresonic Q&A last weekend, vocals are the first casualties of the remix. In the fifth minute a horn bursts through the smoked out jazz club murk.
Second Night Without Charge is a different beast, opening with kick drum and the rumble of sub- bass, more tense, with some bleeps riding on top. A minute in the percussion and snare hit and they raises it up a notch. The track then winds and unwinds, various sounds entering and exiting, for the next seven minutes, all the time the drums and bass pushing on- for want of a better description, abstract deep house.
When This Film's Crap, Let's Slash The Seats was released on CD in the US in 1998 it came with a second disc of extras, the remixes and B-sides from the UK releases in 1996 compiled into a second album bookended by the Two Lone Swordsmen versions of Gone, opening and closing things in a way that made it sound like they were planned to do exactly that.
This is my what seems like weekly David Holmes post, the newest single from his forthcoming album arriving yesterday, a perfectly timed piece of words and music for those of us who feel up to their knees/ neck in things at the moment. Stop Apologising is three and a half minutes of pulsating electro- disco, glam stomp and rattling snares and Raven Violet singing of how overthinking, catastrophising, inaction and how we should all find the power and strength to live more freely. There's a nod to psychedelic therapy in there too.
As with the three previous releases there are some remixes of Stop Apologising to push the song in a more thumpy, clubby direction. Horse Meat Disco weigh in with a pair of runaway, pumped up, stomping remixes directly aimed at the space near the glitterball. Colleen 'Cosmo' Murphy strips the song down into bassline and FX and clipped guitar, a technicoloured funk version. All can be found here.
The album, Blind On A Galloping Horse, comes out on 10th November and I'm calling it early, it's going to feature highly in end of year lists. Holmes is staking out some ground with the album lyrically, a response to the current and recent insanities of the world, an album taking in the personal and the political, a record about inspiration and loss and trying to find a space in which to live. The three singles released over the last two years have already taken in politics, populism and the power to resist it (Hope Is The Last Thing To Die), the collective strength and inspiration found in youth movements and subcultures (It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love) and a rollcall of the great innovators and artists of the recent past (Necessary Genius)- David's response to the internal and external world he and we live in, someone who has something to say and has found the words to say it. More power to him.
Necessary Genius came out yesterday, the new single from David Holmes ahead of his album in November, a fourteen track album titled Blind On A Galloping Horse. Necessary Genius rides in on a rattling drum machine and gliding synths, a kraut/ cosmische spliced with 80s electro- pop celebration of outsiders, artists, misfits, dreamers and believers, with vocals from Raven Violet. David's list includes Tony Wilson, Sinead O'Connor, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, Angela Davis, Andrew Weatherall, Nina Simone, Terry Hall and Samuel Beckett in its rollcall of cultural inspirations, of people to believe in, alongside northern soul, rock and roll, agitprop and refugees. It's the latest in Holmes' recent run of songs that once over send me straight back to the beginning, clicking play again and again. This one sounds like a classic 7" single from the glory years of that format, a short sweet blast of sideways pop music and clarion call.
Necessary Genius comes after Holmes' pair of singles It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love and Hope Is The Last Thing To Die (released in 2022 and 2021 respectively) and the long awaited release of that pair of songs on vinyl is finally happening in early November. Those two songs have been played round here as often as any others released since 2020 and I suspect Necessary Genius will follow suit with the rest of Blind On A Galloping Horse following close behind.
A few weeks ago David made his monthly God's Waiting Room radio show at NTS a two hour tribute to Sinead O'Connor, finishing with a ten minute version of his remix of Orbital's Belfast with the vocal from Nothing Compares 2U mixed into it and then fading into an excerpt from an interview with Sinead. David read my blogpost and very kindly sent it to me. Up now for a limited time.
If you ever find yourself in the car park hell of Asda in Stockport, a car park split over two multi- storey sites linked by bridges and with different walkways to enter the supermarket, take some comfort from the fact that even in these unpromising conditions a moment of joy can still arrive- someone painted this little devil on the wall in a corner. This has nothing to do with the post that will follow, it's just a disconnected intro.
As is traditional here is my end of year list, twenty two musical artefacts 2022 in list form, a list combining singles, albums and EPs into one countdown- you'll notice I've cheated, there are many more than twenty two releases contained within. In a year shot through with all kinds of personal difficulties caused by grief and bereavement following Isaac's death at the end of last year, music has been an area of solace and distraction for me and I have listened to and enjoyed a huge amount of new music this year. I know as well there are albums I haven't heard and should have- Working Men's Club and Fontaines DC come to mind- and hopefully I'll get to them eventually. So, with no further ado...
Number Twenty Two
Some albums that have made the year tick, in no particular order:
Coyote: Everything Moves Nothing Rests
Sheer Taft: And Then There Were Four
Société Étrange: Chance
Gabe Gurnsey: Diablo
Timothy J. Fairplay: Free Andromeda
Half Man Half Biscuit: The Voltarol Years
Rich Ruth: I Survived, It's Over
Wet Leg: Wet Leg
Red Snapper: Everybody Is Somebody
Tigerbalm: International Love Affair
Panda Bear and Sonic Boom: Reset
The Order Of The 12: Lore Of The Land
Spiritualized: Everything Was Beautiful
Warrington- Runcorn New Town Development Plan: Districts, Roads, Open Space
Jon Hopkins: Music For Psychedelic Therapy
Number Twenty One
Some singles and EPs that have been on rotation at the Bagging Area this year, again, in no particular order:
Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s and Brix Smith: Brix Goes Tubular
Sault: 10
Phil Kieran and Green Velvet: Enjoy The Day Hardway Bros Meets Monkton
BTCOP: Just A Disco especially the Lights On A Hill Mix
Matt Gunn: Disko Drohne EP and the massive remix package
The Vendetta Stone remixes 12"
Peak High: Was That All It Was Hardway Bros remixes
Perry Granville: Lumux and Cleveland Sundays
Confidence Man: Feels Like A Different Thing (Daniel Avery remix)
Cantoma: Alive Remixes EP
Unknown Genre: Elevator Ride
Dirt Bogarde: Triumphe De Liebe and So Far Away
Curses: Gina Lollobrigida
Orbital and Sleaford Mods: Dirty Rat
Hifi Sean and David McAlmont: All In The World (and just wait for the album that gets a full release next year, a stunning record- the title track alone is one of next year's best songs)
Number Twenty
Various albums by Various Artists
There have been a slew of great compilation albums this year, multi- artist releases containing umpteen gems and treasure- The Chill Out Tent Volume 1, a compilation from Warm titled Home complete with animal and bird sounds between the tracks, Spun Out's Oompty Boompty Music compilation, the Shelter Me compilation from Leeds based Paisley Dark label and the cream of this crop, Higher Love Volume 2 (from the Brighton label of the same name).
Number Nineteen
Fontan: Iriz
A 7" single released on Hoga Nord at the start of the year, a gorgeous spaced out, instrumental warm bath with slowly building drums.
Number Eighteen
Boxheater Jackson: We Are One
Exeter's Mighty Force label has had quite a year. Boxheater Jackson's ten track album We Are One is a sublime set of chugging, optimistic, cosmic acid house. Also worth checking out on Mighty Force are Golden Donna's The Truth About Love, lovely washes of ambient techno, and the funky acid house/ indie- dance crossover Pro- Oxidant by Long Range Desert Group.
Number Seventeen
Mark Peters with Dot Allison: Sundowning/ Richard Norris ambient remix
Mark's latest album, Red Sunset Dreams, is pointing away from Wigan and towards the wide open landscapes of the US. With Dot Allison on vocals Switch On The Sky was a highlight- and then Sundowning came out, shimmering instrumental floaty ambience with a superb pair of Richard Norris remixes. Dot also had a solo EP out with the final remix from Lee 'Scratch' Perry, a lovely dubby version of Love Died In Our Arms.
Number Sixteen
The Orielles: Tableau
Tableau is one of the year's most unexpected treats, a double album spanning spoken word, dream pop, 60s jazz, indie and whatever else the trio decided they could turn their hands to. The recent Eyes Of Others' remix of Darkened Corners was superb spun out psychedelia and The Orielles own remix of Unknown Genre's Elevator Ride an unexpected visit to early 90s ambient techno.
Number Fifteen
Anatolian Weapons: Selected Acid Tracks
Strong acid from Greece, 808s set to stun, seven tracks of mind bending stuff. Acid Research 63, Acid Research 20 and Desert Track 66 are the picks and so much more than their functional titles suggest.
Number Fourteen
Rude Audio: Big Heat
A five track EP with typically brilliant tracks and remixes. Big Heat is a low slung, throbbing, dub techno groover, straight outta South London.
Number Thirteen
Pye Corner Audio: Let's Emerge
The latest Pye Corner Audio album left the dystopic sounds of last year's Entangled Routes and looked towards the summer, as typified on the glorious Warmth Of The Sun single with Andy Bell adding guitar to the analogue synth ambience. Sonic Boom remixed three tracks from the album, released as an excellent EP, Let's Remerge. A PCA remix of Principles Of Geometry's First I Heard Color is in the same area.
Number Twelve
Rhenizand: Atlantis Atlantis
More brilliant Belgian dance pop/ Balearic pop, an album that lights up any room it's played in. They can do no wrong for me.
Number Eleven
Unloved: Turn Of The Screw/ Turn Of The Screw (Erol Alkan Rework)
The new Unloved album, The Pink Album, found David Holmes, Keefus Ciancia and Jade Vincent and their 60s Now! sound extended over four sides of vinyl, twenty two songs (with Raven Violet, Etienne Daho and Jarvis Cocker along for the ride). On songs like Mother's Been A Bad Girl the woozy, disturbed, reverb drenched sound hit the spot and on Turn Of The Screw they nailed it, a driving, urgent, psychedelic pop song with Raven Violet on vocals and in charge. The remixes were bang on too, Erol Alkan's remix of Turn Of The Screw especially (and it sounded huge when David spun it at the Golden Lion in October). There's' an exhibition of Julian House's sleeve art at The Social in London too if you're in that neck of the woods.
Number Ten
10:40: three EPs
Jesse Fahnestock's 10:40 has one of 2022's ongoing delights, a slew of tracks and remixes from the start of the year to it's recent advent calendar end. Kissed Again, a gorgeous piece of emotional slow motion Balearic dance first came out in 2021 but was released this year by Brighton's Higher Love as an EP with the equally lovely Fin and Coat Check. Thickener (both versions) and The Knack (three versions) were both wonky dancefloor oriented thumpers.
Number Nine
The Summerisle Six: This Is Something/ This Is Something (Rico Conning Remix)
Sean Johnston's Wicker Man/ Todmorden inspired psyche folk/ indie dance side project grew from a trio to a sextet for this release (Andy Bell, Jo Bartlett, Duncan Gray, Kev Sharkey and Mick Somerset Ward all on board) for one of the year's best 12", an indie dance floor filler. Rico Conning's remix, a ten minute blissed out sunset journey, is the remix of the year.
Number Eight
Jazxing: Pearls Of The Baltic Sea
An album of Polish Balearica that appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Start with the sax led Fala and go from there.
Number Seven
Michael Head and The Red Elastic Band: Dear Scott.
Mick Head's latest wonderfully crafted and written set of songs, tales of life lived and lives observed, with typically lovely melodies.
Number Six
Daniel Avery: Chaos Energy
A double vinyl ambient/ industrial/ techno album- emotive and hard hitting human/ machine music.
Number Five
Jezebell: Jezebellearica
A nine minute tribute to DJ Alfredo, the White Isle and an open minded approach to music, Jezebellearica was the song of the summer round here. Jezebell's The Knack, Dancing Not Fighting, Et Moi and Concurrence were all worth mentioning here too.
Number Four
Decius: Vol 1
Decius's album is twelve tracks of heady, sleazy, minimal, techno, inspired by the proto- house of Ron Hardy, with it's tongue firmly in its cheek, single entrendres rubbing up against distorted synths and banging beats. I reviewed it for Ban Ban Ton Ton back in November. In a turn of events I wasn't expecting some of my review has been pulled out for the press release, where my words are directly below a quote from Iggy Pop. As a year end treat Decius have made an end of year mix available, a pay what you want deal, with many of the tracks from the album included in it. You can get it here.
Number Three: EP |Of The Year
Andy Bell: Untitled Film Stills and I Am A Strange Loop
Andy Bell's Flicker came out at the start of the year, a beautiful and fully realised solo album with songs spanning the range of his influences- backwards tracks, guitar songs reprising the chord sequences from the earliest Ride records, cosmic instrumentals and straight ahead guitar pop. During the course of the year cover versions and remixes appeared, compiled in the autumn onto two four track 10" vinyl EPs (with a third of acoustic versions) and extras available digitally. Untitled Film Stills is a beautiful way to spend twenty minutes, his covers of Pentangle's Light Fight, Yoko Ono's Listen, The Snow Is Falling and The Kinks' The Way Love Used To Be all right up there and the small hours, quiet devastation of his cover of Arthur Russell's Our Last Night Together capable of bringing tears. The remixes EP is superb too with David Holmes Radical Mycology Remix of The Sky Without You and Richard Norris' lovely slowed down, string laden version of Something Like Love the standouts.
Number Two: Album Of The Year
A Mountain Of One: Stars Planets Dust Me
Existential Balearica, yacht rock, symphonic dark pop- however I slice it this album has been the one I'v enjoyed and played more than any other in 2022. Bubbling synth basslines, FXed vocals, acoustic guitars, piano, tom tom drums, cosmic hippy questions with no answers, spaced out and widescreen sun baked music with Rolo from The Woodentops on board for good measure. The remixes of Star in the summer stretched things further still, the Glok remix linking this with Andy Bell (at number three).
It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love was released on Valentine's Day and has been there throughout the year for me, played daily at times. David's tribute to the youth movements of our youths- the mods, rockers, rastas, punks, soul boys, teds, ravers and clubbers- sung by Raven Violet is a triumph, its two note keyboard blast and boom- tish drums capable of lifting the spirits on the lowest of days and the lyrics- 'I remember back when we were young/ They said the people's day would surely come/ It's over now if we run out of love'- don't really need picking through. It's the best single/ song I've heard this year and hopefully at some point will, along with last year's Hope Is The Last Thing To Die, form the centrepieces of an album. But if not, on its own, it's more than enough.
There was a remix a little while later, the song being toughened up and stretched out for late night revelry- Darren Emerson's Huffa Remix and the Hardway Bros one were the pick of the bunch for me. Holmes has had quite a year, his DJ gigs in small venues have been on fire- the Golden Lion in Todmorden was particularly memorable not least because I was on the turntables that evening and handed over to him, a chain of events a younger me would struggle to comprehend. Friends who went to his gig at the Social in London in February raved about it as did friends who saw him in Glasgow more recently. A few months ago David released a 7" on Hoga Nord, the motorik/ Joy Division glide of No One Is Smarter Than History another highlight of 2022 and his remix of The Vendetta Suite's Purple Haze, Yellow Sunrise is another 2022 peak as is his remix of Orbital's Belfast, thirty years after the original. You'll notice David appears elsewhere in this list as Unloved and with a remix of Andy Bell too. When you're on a roll, just keep on rolling.
Isaac died a year ago today, 30th November 2021 at around quarter to two in the afternoon. He was twenty three. When the worst thing that could possibly happen to you has happened, it's difficult to know which way is up. The last few weeks have been really difficult as this day has borne down on us. I go over the events of the last few days of Isaac's life in my head sometimes, reliving them. Earlier this year I suffered some quite extreme flashbacks, which put me back in to the the room with him as he died. It was so quick which has made it more traumatic. Covid came and took him in less than a week. He was out of sorts on his birthday, tested positive for Covid the following day (Wednesday) and then became more unwell until on Saturday evening we phoned an ambulance. They took him into Wythenshawe hospital. On the Monday morning the consultants told us there was nothing they could do, that the Covid was in his lungs and given his weakened immune system there were no drugs that would work, that he would die within the next couple of days. He died the following day, Tuesday. The three of us were there when he went. I was sitting on his bed facing him, holding his hands. The flashbacks, auditory and visual, were often of this moment. I haven't had any since May, something I feel relieved about but it doesn't take much for me to go back to those days and to replay what happened. I'm not sure if it helps or not but as this date has come closer an closer my mind has been going back there more often.
It's difficult to believe it is already a year since he died when it feels so recent and still feels so raw. The passing of time is a real fucker and dates and anniversaries have been extremely difficult to deal with, mainly something to get over and be done with. Today may prove to be the toughest of them all, the coming to terms with the fact that it's a year now that he's been gone, that it's now over a year since he was in the house with us, living with us. People keep saying that a year really isn't actually very long at all, especially at our age, but still, a year... it baffles me somehow.
Writing about it all here has helped. I'm sure at times it has been an uncomfortable and difficult read for others and I don't blame anyone who quietly closes the page and goes to read something else. Some people have said it has helped them, to know where we're at or where we're up to. Writing it down and posting it has helped me get my thoughts in order and I think it has worked as a form of therapy.
We made the decision to have Isaac buried and we're glad we did. Having his grave as somewhere to go has helped. Early on, back in January and February, it was difficult and I liked going, it felt like he was closer to us while we were there, but leaving was tough. It's still very difficult sometimes, standing there can bring home very suddenly the enormity of what has happened and it has the power to floor me, leaves me feeling like I have to catch my breath. But it's comforting too. It's good to go and see that other people have been, that people have taken flowers or left things for him. We still haven't sorted a headstone and I don't feel any particular need to do that in a rush. The planter we filled with flowers has changed as the year has passed. I started photographing it when we visited, keeping a record of it and how it has changed with the seasons. This picture was quite recent, mid- November. There is a road in the distance of that picture- you can't see it but it's there. The road runs between Broadheath (near Altrincham) and the road to Lymm (I've never checked the timetable but I wouldn't think it's a busy or profitable route and I can't imagine there's more than one bus per hour). We try to go to see him at least once a week. Almost every single time we visit, a bus goes past which always makes me smile. Isaac loved public transport and the bus shuttling back and forth between Altrincham and Warrington has begun to feel like a little tribute to him.
This place started as a music blog in January 2010 but became intertwined with my life from quite early days and Isaac (and Eliza) have featured regularly. This year especially the music and Isaac's death and my/ our grief have become more wrapped up in each other. Here are two songs that have come to mean something to me in the last few weeks, that have become part of Isaac, his death and my grief, and in some way a part of trying to deal with it all.
Ten days ago I posted a forty minute Flaming Lips mix. I knew some of the songs would be affecting, that they might get to me. Do You Realise?? has that power in any circumstances, even without dealing with the death of your child. Race For The Prize has been connected to Isaac for me since very early days. Jesse Fahnestock questioned- quite reasonably- why Fight Test wasn't part of my mix.
Fight Test definitely should have been included and for a while it was but I took it out. After our conversation I went back to it and some lines really jumped out...
'Cause I'm a man, not a boy/ And there are some things you can't avoid/ You have to face them/ When you're not prepared to face them'
That's a truth right there. There's some lovely imagery in the song too, something to hold on to...
'I don't know where the sunbeams end/ And the starlights begin/ It's all a mystery'
It's funny how the meaning of songs and the way you hear them can change, that they can be one thing at one point in your life and another at another. That's definitely true of Fight Test. My other song for today is this one by Nick Drake...
A few weeks ago I pulled out a compilation CD from a pile of homemade one that date back years, to listen to in the car. 'Cello Song came on and it worked its magic as I drove. I kept playing it, pressing back, playing it again, pressing back. It's a gorgeous, almost weightless, song, finger picked guitar melodies and deep sonorous cello sweeps wrapping themselves around each other. I've known and loved it for years without ever really noting the words. Like many of Nick Drake's songs, it's poetic and melancholic but there is a tinge in his voice which suggests hope. The words began to come into focus but I had to wait to do an internet search for them to read them in full-
'Strange face, with your eyes So pale and sincere Underneath you know well You have nothing to fear For the dreams that came to you when so young Told of a life Where spring is sprung
You would seem so frail In the cold of the night When the armies of emotion Go out to fight But while the earth sinks to its grave You sail to the sky On the crest of a wave
So forget this cruel world Where I belong I'll just sit and wait And sing my song And if one day you should see me in the crowd Lend a hand and lift me To your place in the cloud'
They struck me hard, left me gasping a little bit and then as I wiped my tears away and read them again, they made me smile. This is never going to leave us and it hurts like nothing I've ever known before, but we have to find a new way to live without him and to find a way to come to terms with the feelings of loss and grief that we have been left with. Isaac will always be with us - and in a funny way I can find him now in places, like in the lines of songs by Nick Drake and Wayne Coyne.
Daniel Avery's new album Ultra Truth came out on Friday, a record already sounding like a contender for album of the year. Across fifteen tracks Daniel's cavernous, euphoric/ anxiety inducing ambient/ industrial/ techno has been fine tuned into an emotive and immersive album. Back in January when I started this Sunday mix series the second week was an Avery half hour mix. In way of a follow up and to celebrate the release of Ultra Truth I thought I'd do a second Avery half hour but this time remixes, Daniel's of other people and one of Daniel, all dating from the last couple of years. The sounds that are trademark Avery- the reverb, the drums, the wall of fog and distortion, the thump of the kick drum, the wobbly synths- are present in many of these which range from fairly languid to full on 'panel beaters from Prague' techno (quote courtesy of Andrew Weatherall, who is never very far away).
David Holmes is in a purple patch, two singles of wonky indie dance brilliance (Hope Is The Last Thing To Die in 2021 and It's Over, If We Run If Of Love this year, both with Raven Violet on vocals) with a follow up 7" out on Hoga Nord later this year, two Unloved albums mining that 60s Now! sound and another due in the autumn, not to mention some stunning remixes. Throwing all of these together with a couple of choice songs from his past that fit in with those seemed an obvious Sunday half hour mix. The main problem was what to leave out- in the end there were several Unloved songs, some of the remixes of the two recent singles, some songs from his solo albums and a smattering of Andrew Weatherall remixes (of I Heard Wonders and Unloved's Devils Angels) that I couldn't fit in so a Holmes Mix Two may have to follow at some point.
