A Space Age Freak Out

This is a three hour mix from DJ John Paynter from a radio show he hosts called A Space Age Freak Out- an accurate name all things considered. Plenty of chuggy, cosmic, psychedelic house and techno from the likes of Tiga, Somerville and Watson and Future Unit. It's all top fun and optimistic, forward looking stuff. Perfect on the hottest weekend of the year with something cold and wet.

She's My Witch

Alderley Edge has a long association with the mystical and esoteric. Legend has it King Arthur sleeps below the ground, inside the cliff at the Edge, waiting for the moment England needs him to come back and save it. 'Yo, Arthur- think that moment might be coming' you might be thinking. Merlin, Arthur's wizard, is associated with the site too. This little house is on the side of the road near The Wizard Pub, a strange little one up, one down affair. Today Alderley Edge is mainly associated with footballers, who live in enormous houses dotted around the village and frequent the wine bars and brasseries. People say the charity shops often have excellent, barely worn stock as a result. This may be rumour though- like Arthur's supposed return. Maybe if he does emerge he'll come bedecked in Balenciaga and Prada on his way to tackle Johnson and Farage with Excalibur.

Fireflies have a single out, a spooky, slow and smokey cover of a Kip Tyler song- She's My Witch, a song Arthur and Merlin could have sung. In this case vocals are from Dani Cali with Nina Walsh and Franck Alba. It's in the new series of Killing Eve (which I haven't seen but people are saying isn't as good as the first one. Ain't it always that way).

Kip Tyler featured here many years ago, back in the Friday night rockabilly series, a 50s rock 'n' roller and bongo player.

This Is Not Jazz

This record is all over the place (in a good way), the result of feverish minds and access to technology. Released in 1987 by Shock Taktix, it was big in the Belgian New Beat scene, and featured on the Liaisons Dangereuses radio show that operated out of Antwerp (apparently- I wasn't present at the Belgian New Beat scene and wasn't tuning into radio stations broadcasting out of Antwerp in the mid- to -late 80s). Massive thumping beats, a huge sequenced bass, nice ascending synthlines and a one fingered keyboard riff, a skronky saxophone coming in more and more as it builds, a pitched down voice intoning 'this is not jazz'.

This Is Not Jazz

A Nice Little Pub In The Middle Of Nowhere

More golden age hip hop for you today but seriously less angry than Public Enemy's 1989 single Fight The Power that raised the temperature here yesterday. I've been meaning to write about De La Soul and their thirty year old debut album. I was listening to Eye Know recently and it sounded ace, really fresh and inventive. But instead today we have De La Soul's Native Tongue's compatriots A Tribe Called Quest. The group's debut single I Left My Wallet In El Segundo came out in 1990. A year later it was remixed by the then fairly unknown Norman Cook and this version was put out as a promo. Norman samples/borrows liberally from/rebuilds the song entirely around Donna Summer's State Of Independence. El Segundo's rap is led by Q- Tip, whose lighthearted drawl sounds wonderful. He narrates the story of coming into some cash, heading south to Mexico and the dangers that lie within- buying gas, eating enchiladas and at the moment of payment being so distracted by the beauty of the waitress that you forget your wallet. Easily done.

I Left My Wallet In El Segundo (The State Of Independence Mix)

As a bonus track here's Donna's sublime early 80s single. State Of Independence was written and originally recorded by Jon and Vangelis. Donna recorded and released her take on it in 1982, a lolloping reggae based groove with sunshine drizzled all over it and Quincy Jones at the controls.

State Of Independence

Bonus, bonus track. In 1992 State Of Independence was covered by Moodswings, laid back, downtempo house groove with Chrissie Hynde and Martin Luther King on vocals. Moodswings were James FT Hood and Grant Showbiz. Grant spent his 80s being road crew and guitar tech for Billy Bragg and The Smiths.I'd imagine being a roadie for The Smiths involved moodswings on a daily basis. The version here is nine minutes of bliss.

Spiritual High (Moodfood Megamix)

You Say What Is This?

Yet another thirty year old record for your ears, this one first released in June 1989, almost thirty years to the day- Public Enemy's Fight The Power. The first line of Chuck D's explosive vocal states the year, as if you had any doubt, '1989, the number, another summer, sound of the funky drummer'. Before that though there is a sample from a speech by civil rights activist Thomas Todd describing African American men and their attitude towards the war in Vietnam- 'Yet our best trained, best educated, best equipped, best prepared troops refuse to fight. Matter of fact, it's safe to say that they would rather switch than fight". 

From there The Bomb Squad take over, bringing the rhythm and the noise, riding in on several James Brown samples- loops layered over loops layered over loops- plus parts borrowed from the lineage of black American music including Sly Stone, The J.B.s, Bobby Byrd, The Dramatics, The Isley Brothers, Rick James, Afrika Bambaataa, Trouble Funk and Kurtis Blow, plus Bob Marley, and for good measure sampling themselves. It's a production tour de force, both furious and made to be danced to, seething with anger and righteousness but funky as you like. Chuck D's voice is an instrument in itself, the tone and timbre of his voice and the rhythm and flow of the words, with Flav cutting in. The only 'live' instrument is Branford Marsalis' saxophone, further cut up and dropped in by Hank Shocklee. It's a 1989 peak, a Public Enemy peak, an anyone ever peak.

Chuck's lyrics for the third verse are are among his best and most provocative. The group always said that the song was about fighting the abuse of power. In the third verse he takes it to another level, aiming squarely at white America and the entire music industry, stealing from black artists to sell white performers to white consumers- 'Elvis' he rasps, his vocal chords igniting, 'was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me, straight up racist that sucker was simple and plain', 'yeah' comes in Flavor Flav, 'motherfuck him and John Wayne'. Chuck D later said he wasn't attacking Elvis personally but that Elvis represented the theft of black music, the lack of acknowledgement that there was black music before Elvis. John Wayne's racist views, on the other hand, were widely known. It's a powerful, incendiary line and followed by one almost as good 'cause I'm black and I'm ready and hyped plus I'm amped, most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps'.

Fight The Power's release in 1989 came with the film Do The Right Thing, Spike Lee's exploration of racial tensions in the summer in Brooklyn, simmering disputes between Italian Americans and African Americans and Korean Americans, white cops and black residents and ends with an explosion of violence by the end of day and the film, partly caused by a pair of scuffed Nikes. The film opens with Rosie Perez dancing to the song. Radio Raheem  blasts it out throughout the film from his boombox. Spike Lee commissioned Pubic Enemy to write the song, something 'defiant... angry... rhythmic' It's fair to say they delivered.

There are two versions of the song- this one, the soundtrack version, worth posting it with the video which is a definitive and dramatic piece of work in itself, filmed in Brooklyn.



The following year a slightly shorter version of Fight The Power closed Public Enemy's album Fear Of A Black Planet, the third of their three classic lps.

Fight The Power 

Desert Wind

This came out in 1993, Desert Wind by Banco de Gaia. Around 1992/93 the dance music scene splintered into multiple paths and sub- genres. There was a whole scene built around ambient dub spliced with world music, trance with tribal rhythms and vocal samples borrowed from Middle Eastern records, which probably started out with a crossover between The Orb and bands from the festival circuit.

Banco de Gaia were a one man operation at first, Toby Marks from Leamington Spa, and this track was the first released in its own right (he'd put out tracks on various compilations before). A year later Banco's first album followed,  Maya, and then Last Train To Llhasa in 1995 (and others since). Desert Wind is a joy, opening with chanting and the voice of  Ofra Haza, then drums, dubby bass and layers of keys and synths. It should hopefully inspire you to dig further.

Desert Wind

Monday's Long Song

This is rather gorgeous and at just under nine minutes pretty long too- banks of cosmische synths, waves of warm sounds, insistent drums. It's by GLOK and called Pulsing, appropriately.



There's a very limited edition cassette of a seven track album already sold out but fear not, the album is out digitally in early July and opens with a twenty minute epic called Dissident. GLOK, it turns out, is Andy Bell, the guitarist from Ride (who also have an album out later this year).  This is by some distance the best thing that any former member of Oasis has been involved in.

June's Not For Everyone

It's frightening how quickly these monthly Andrew Weatherall radio shows come around- music's not for everyone and time's not slowing down. That's June almost over.



Last month's was particularly good, fit to burst with good tunes and songs. This month's is the now standard stew of psychedelia, dub, garage rock, global sounds, icy electronica- music from the fringes of popular culture. Tracklist.

Together More

Together More is the latest release on Andrew Weatherall's Bird Scarer label- BS007 if you're keeping a count- from Scott Fraser and vocals from Louise Quinn, a slow burning, deep house rumble, a track with a kind of dark energy. The flipside of the limited edition 12" is an Andrew Weatherall remix and in a weird and unexpected turn of events I'm digging the original version more than the remix at the moment.



Back in 2012 Scott Fraser's A Life Of Silence was the second Bird Scarer release, a 12" that is one of the best releases of its kind of the last decade. That may sound like hyperbole but it's a magnificent beast- nine minutes plus of juddering, synth led beauty with a bassline like prime mid 80s Peter Hook and a choppy guitar part.

A Life Of Silence (Timothy J. Fairplay's 'Fall Of Shame' Remix)

Midsummer

Today is the summer solstice, the longest day, midsummer. This time last year we were deep into a heat wave and weeks of wall-to-wall sunshine. This year less so. But still, we should have a celebration of midsummer nonetheless.

St Etienne's early singles were so carefree and joyous, hopped up on the spirit of the times and the possibilities that 1990 seemed to offer. Their debut 12" cover of Neil Young's Only Love Can Break Your Heart and the follow up, their cover of The Field Mice's Kiss And Make Up, are both prized records for me. In a way, if they'd done nothing else I'd have been happy. Obviously they went on to record loads of good songs and several really good albums but there's an innocence and purity about the early days singles that sets them apart.

The Kiss And Make Up 12" came in a green sleeve with the European Union flag stars in white, reversed for the remix 12" where Pete Heller takes the original and makes it even more loved up. The vocals on this are pre- Sarah Cracknell, with Dead Famous People's Donna Savage at the mic. Turn it up a little bit louder and celebrate midsummer as the sun stays around longer than on any other day.

Kiss And Make Up (Midsummer Madness Mix)

Maru

This came out back in April, a lovely piece of electronic music from Plaid. The album is out now. Back in the 90s this sort of ting became called IDM- intelligent dance music- a label which always seemed ridiculous to me, snobbery in dance music epitomised. Plaid and their parent project The Black Dog, their numerous other side projects plus various other acts who put records out through Warp, became the embodiment of IDM and the label still irritates me when I see it today. But this track is sublime, whatever labels get stuck to it.



At the album's website you can play with the sounds that make up the new album- deconstruct it is probably the correct way to put it- but essentially you can muck about with them. If you play the song on Youtube and start to mess around with the sounds on the website at the same time you can remix it yourself live.

The Stars Were Aligned

This one follows on fairly well from Monday and Tuesday's posts, an uptempo, burbling, adventurous track from Birmingham's Field Of Dreams. I've written about them before, first last year when they released an ep called Nothing Is Perfect which included an Andrew Weatherall remix and then earlier this year with their still superb sounding three track No 303 ep. This one came off an ep called Whatever Happened To? which came out in between the two, in August last year, and sounds ace, a slow motion chug, bleepy and spacey with an echo-laden voice exclaiming 'It was euphoric, it was like the most amazing thing...'

Tabarin

DJ and producer Phil Mison has released records as Cantoma, a Balearic project from a man who held down a two year residency at the Cafe del Mar. The album Just Landed came out in 2014 and was followed by some vinyl only remixes and extra tracks, all of which were collected into a digital release in 2015 called Remixes And Bonus Tracks. Self explanatory. The extras albums is easily as good as Just Landed, chock full of laid back summer charms and some dancier, uptempo tracks. This one is a current favourite, opening with funky drums and percussion and then awash with bubbling synth lines, dreamy basslines and flutes.

Tabarin (Whatever/Whatever Remix)

Monday's Long Song

This is ten minutes of bliss from 2017, a Steve Cobby remix of a track from Tempelhof and Gigi Masin's Tsuki album. The song sets out at a leisurely pace with xylophone, synth strings and pattering drum pads and isn't in any kind of hurry to get anywhere.The vocal floats over the top, the words just so slightly indistinct that you can't quite make them out. If only the sun would come out and we didn't have to go to work, this would be the perfect way to start the week.

Shopping List

All those guitars this week have been good but they've left me wanting something more soothing for the weekend. Test Pressing is a website promoting all things Balearic, mainly the music and its attendant culture. It's here. If you dig around in the Mixes tab you'll find scores of downloadable mixes from the likes of Phil Mison, Leo Mas, Apiento, Gilles Peterson and Toby Tobias- more blissed out, chilled tunes than you can shake a flip flop at.

One that I've been enjoying has gone up very recently, an hour long mix called The Shopping List, tracks out in June 2019 that come with the Test Pressing recommendation. It's slowed down, electronic and dubby, experimental and ambient, available to listen to or download and very good indeed. There doesn't seem to be a way to embed it but you can find it here.

Tracklist

• The Balek Band – Tometsi (Beauty and the Beat)
• Lexx featuring Asé – Eye 1-2 (Phantom Island)
• Wilson Tanner – All Hands Bury the Dead (Efficient Space)
• MØZAIKA – Crepuscule (Public Possession)
• River Yarra – Toad Charmer (Antinote)
• James Booth – Locus (Growing Bin)
• Brainwaltzera – Marzipan Rhombus (Birthday edit) (Emotional Rescue)
• Yu Su – Little Birds, Moonbath (Second Circle)
• International Noise Orchestra – Muezzin (Emotional Rescue)
• Lord Tusk – Tell Me (Otis)

Industrial Estate

Longley Lane runs from Northenden to Wythenshawe. Before you get to Sharston tip (sorry, Household Waste Recycling Centre) there is a sprawling industrial estate with some magnificent 1930s buildings, all still in use today. The one above is a gigantic concrete hanger, containing I don't knows what. I couldn't get the whole thing into one shot on my phone's camera but you can see the curve of the roof on the front well enough and the enormous windows down the side. If you like industrial architecture- and I'm sure some of you do- then this place is paradise. Those of a certain disposition will see or hear the words industrial estate and instantly hear this running in their head...

Industrial Estate

There, that's cleared your ears out hasn't it, The Fall back in 1979.

'Yeah, yeah, industrial estate
And the crap in the air will fuck up your face
Yeah, yeah, industrial estate
Boss can bloody take most of your wage'

On the main road is this building, currently occupied by Siltint Industries Ltd, brickwork all painted white, which I love beyond reason. 

Sixteen

The little girl in this photograph, our daughter Eliza, turns sixteen today (coincidentally also the day she takes her last GCSE exam). The toddler in The Clash t-shirt seems a long time ago now. In recent time honoured fashion she has booked a day ticket for the Leeds festival, a rite of passage for today's teenagers. Happy birthday Eliza- enjoy the physics exam and your last day at school.

For many years Eliza and her friend have gone to dance classes, joined the team and performed locally and at shows. I've often gone to pick them up in the car from the classes. On one occasion when they were both much younger I had Misty Waters by The Kinks playing on the car CD player. They latched onto it and started singing along. It then became a thing, playing Misty Waters and all of us belting it out on the drive back from dance. We were still doing it a few weeks ago.

Recorded by The Kinks in 1968 Misty Waters was an outtake- an outtake!- that failed to make it onto either Four Well Respected Gentlemen or The Village Green Preservation Society and only turned up much later on The Great Lost Kinks Album.

Misty Waters 

Amps cranked up and at double the speed, Billy Childish and The Buff Medways covered the song for their 2000 album Steady The Buffs, about the time I started to get into Wild Billy Childish and his enormous back catalogue.

Misty Water

This Searing Light

I have recently read Jon Savage's book about Joy Division- This Searing Light, The Sun And Everything Else: Joy Division: The Oral History. When I first heard about it I wasn't sure an oral history, constructed from interviews old and new, was what I wanted from a Joy Division book by Jon Savage, one of the best writers of his generation. What I wanted was Jon's writing, his thoughts and words, his insights. But within pages of starting the book I was realised I was wrong- the selection of quotes from interviews, the perspectives of the participants and eye witnesses, is exactly the way the story of Joy Division should be told. Some of the excerpts and quotes are familiar, from the Joy Division documentary from 2007, from interviews and articles I've read elsewhere. Some are taken from reviews and contemporary music press accounts. Some are new. The genius of Jon's assemblage of the quotes is in the constant forward momentum of the story, told from within the band and from outside it, and the way he manages to make time shift. Clearly we all know the ending and some of the passages are from interviews with Sumner, Hook and Morris talking now about then, but despite them having the benefit of hindsight the book has a real immediacy, as if events are unfolding in front of your eyes. The shifting focus from one person to another, with interviews conducted at different points between 1978 and 2018, is really well done. The final few chapters, hurtling into 1980 and Ian's increasing issues with his epilepsy and the side effects of the medication, the ongoing situation with Ian, Deborah Curtis and Annik Honore and the sense within the group that they should stop and give Ian a rest- while at the same time they're making Transmission, Atmosphere, Dead Souls, Closer and Love Will Tear Us Apart- is brilliantly portrayed, heartrendingly so as the whirlpool sucks Ian further into it, and the loss of control by all involved. If you have any interest in the Joy Division story or the music they made, I can't recommend it enough.

Fittingly, for a group so defined by the graphic presentation of the art and the beauty of Peter Saville's work, it is a superbly put together book too, from the shiny reflective cover with the book title in the font used for Closer and grainy band photo, to the selection of gig shots and posters. There are a pair of quotes placed at the end of two of the chapters that are genuinely breathtaking, that make you stop, turn back a few pages and read again, so that the quote comes at you once more- one is from Tony Wilson, that gives the book its title (you should buy it, read it and enjoy that moment yourself). The other is from Annik Honore where she says 'They made [the music] very naturally... and that's why it was so good, because they were not self-conscious about it. I think it was coming from deep within them... it was spontaneous, it was not calculated, you know, not artificial; they had the light, the spirit.' For a group that lasted only a couple of years and wrote and recorded no more than eighty songs, that had an enormous impact on those around them and in their audience at the time- Annik's quote goes some way toward explaining their particular brilliance.

In 1978, before Factory existed, Joy Division got some studio time from RCA (who had an office in Manchester at the time). The session didn't go very well and they almost walked out. It was suggested that they record a cover of version of N.F. Porter's northern soul classic Keep On Keeping On. Hooky says they could never do covers, they never turned out well, they couldn't work out the parts, but in this case they kept the guitar riff which became Interzone. It would be one of the ten songs that became Unknown Pleasures, recorded in Stockport's Strawberry Studios with Martin Hannett in 1979. Hooky and Bernard hated Unknown Pleasures. Hannett took away their aggressive, punky live sound and made it something else, something with space and atmosphere and a doomy sense of things going wrong. Everyone else loved it. The rest, as they always say, is history.

Keep On Keeping On

Interzone

Colours In The Air

While looking for something else I found a CD I'd forgotten I owned- Zero: A Martin Hannett Story 1977- 1991. It's a compilation of songs recorded and produced by Hannett, from Boredom by Buzzcocks onward. Zero is a really good compilation, even with U2's presence, showing the range and depth of Hannett's talents and the importance of the man to the sound of some key bands. The final song on the CD is World Of Twist's 1991 cover of She's A Rainbow and it struck me that this week's posts were developing a cover versions theme and that I should go with the flow.

World Of Twist are much missed in some corners not least round here- they got pulled along in the early 90s Manchester slipstream but didn't really fit in with the sound or the look. Their cover of She's A Rainbow was originally a B-side to their debut single The Storm and then re-appeared in 1992 in various guises and with remixes as the record label attempted to get a hit and some sales. The version here was one of the last songs Hannett worked on before his death in April 1991 aged just 41. In a way She's A Rainbow was one of World Of Twist's less interesting songs, a pretty straight cover version and it doesn't really show Hannett's peculiar production genius especially either. But it's fun and fits in with the group's aesthetic.

She's A Rainbow

Hannett lost five years in the 80s to heroin addiction and the groundbreaking productions he did in the late 70s and early 80s especially with the Factory bands- Joy Division, New Order, Durutti Column, Section 25, ACR- were well behind him and unlikely to be equalled (although he really pulled it out of the bag with Bummed).

The original of She's A Rainbow was on The Rolling Stones 1967 album Their Satanic Majesties Request, a lightweight, pretty tune, sing-song psychedelia with la la la backing vocals, Nicky Hopkins on piano and some Brian Jones Mellotron. A most un-Stonesy single and song, coming at a mid-point between Paint It Black and Jumping Jack Flash.

She's A Rainbow

Strange You Never Knew

Out in town on Saturday night we ended up in a pub at the northern end of the city centre with a decent selection of music playing. Mazzy Star's 1994 single played, the sort of song that can silence a pub- it didn't silence us, we discussed the various attractions of the song and its singer.

Fade Into You

Lovely isn't it? Acoustic guitar, a slide guitar part, a lazy drumbeat and Hope Sandoval's wondrous, hazy vocal. A song that is is much more than the sum of its parts, its all about the playing, the performance and the dust and heat that it evokes. Deserts and lust and suchlike.

In 2013 J Mascis recorded a cover version which is pretty wonderful in its own right, twin acoustic guitars and J's cracking, weathered voice.

Fade Into You