Tonight we are going to my niece's 18th birthday party. She is a very artistic and creative person and has given her party a retro space/sci fi theme, with fancy dress. So tonight Matthew, I am going to be ...Yuri Gagarin.
After all that New Order (and I could go on I'm sure) it's time for a change of pace and style. Andrew Weatherall has uploaded another edition of his R.G.C. Archive Hour and it's another dub special. Opening with Sly and Robbie with Bunny Lee and running through to The Disciples via Mad Professor, Joe Gibbs and the wonderfully named song Drugs Is A Ting by Bush Chemist.
A Dub Tribulation – Sly & Robbie Vs. Bunny Lee African Child (Dubz) - Sly & Robbie Vs. Bunny Lee C.T.U.F.B – Sound Iration Drugs Is A Ting – Bush Chemist Rockfort Rock (Version) – Teamworks Willow Tree (Dub) – Linval Thompson and the Revolutionaries Whenever You Need Me (Dub) – Cornell Campbell Dub Service – Mad Professor Kunte Kinte The African Warrior – Mad Professor Ghetto Pace - Mad Professor Walls Of Jericho - Joe Gibbs & The Professionals Revenge - Joe Gibbs & The Professionals World Of Dub – The Revolutionaries Natural Dub – Lidj Incorporated The Message – The Disciples
Technique is my favourite New Order album. Released in January 1989 I was 18 years old and I bought it the day it came out and then played it endlessly. I had a poster of the beautiful Peter Saville cover, fly-poster size, abut 6' by 5', on my wall for ages. Technique is the sound of summer, nine songs infused with the spirit of sunshine, warm seas, blue skies and summer holidays but shot through with a sense of sadness and loss.
The single that preceded it was Fine Time and it opens Technique. New Order had gone to record the album in Ibiza, at Hooky's insistence, and spent three months there ('an expensive way to have a holiday' Tony Wilson). The story has it that they recorded a few drum tracks and a guitar solo and that most of the work recording it was done at Real World in Bath. This was down to two things- firstly, the studio was shit. Secondly the group and entourage were easily distracted by what Ibiza had to offer. So while the album wasn't really recorded in Ibiza ('about 20% done there' according to Barney) it is inspired by the adventures the group had in Ibiza's nightclubs, on Ibiza's drugs, with Ibiza's people (and the Happy Mondays who turned up to join in the fun). Fine Time is a full on electronic dance record, inspired by a tune Barney heard in Amnesia but couldn't remember the day after. A throbbing sequenced bassline, bleeps and staccato stabs, and that 'sexy', slowed down vocal. This Top Of The Pops performance is legendary, as Barney introduced the viewers to the Bez dance. Playing live too.
Fine Time came out on 7", 12" and a remix 12" with this version by Steve 'Silk' Hurley complete with sheep noises and the full Barry White vocal 'You got style, you got class, but most of all... you got love technique'.
Fine Time is a blast, a proper dance record. The rest of the album is eight slices of perfect Mancunian dance pop, effortlessly combining acoustic guitars, real drums, drum machines, some of Hooky's most melodic bass runs, gorgeous synth lines, frazzled guitar solos and Barney's best vocals. Lyrically the songs were all Bernard's work and most seem to reflect on love and life gone wrong and the lessons learned. To pick four examples from four different songs relatively randomly...
'My life ain't no holiday
I've been to the point of no return'
'It takes years to find the nerve
To be apart from what you've done
To find the truth inside yourself
And not depend on anyone'
'I spent a lifetime working on you
And you won't even talk to me'
'I'm not some kind of foolish lover
I couldn't take this from no other
You're not being cool with me
Cause I always know that you'll come back to me'
Run (which was also a single, released in a slightly remixed form by Scott Litt as Run 2) is allegedly about Factory and Tony Wilson and the Hacienda's financial problems. John Denver sued the band because of similarities between Run and his Leaving On A Jet Plane. I struggle to hear the similarities but I wasn't the judge and Denver was awarded a writing credit for the song.
I can't choose between any of the songs on Technique- some are more guitar based, some more singalong, some more dancey, some all out pop, but all hit that sweet spot musically, vocally, lyrically and spiritually. Recently Vanishing Point and Mr Disco have been the ones really doing it for me. Mr Disco has a stuttering keyboard part and then guitar/bass backing. The drum machine sends this squarely to the open air dancefloors of Ibiza's clubs. Bernard sings of 'the holiday we spent together, lives with me now and forever' and the gorgeous hook 'I can't find my piece of mind, because I think about you all of the time'. After the chorus there are crashing synth stabs and instrumental breaks, a synth clarinet maybe, and then verse and chorus again. The dropout at 2.39 with synth bass and drum machine is heart-stopping. Then there are more wonderful synths before the chorus comes back a minute later and a whispered bit leading towards the pile up at the end and the sound of hitting all the keys on the synth at once. One of their very best.
As a bonus, here's the sublime Vanishing Point played live on Channel 4's Big World Cafe
and Round And Round from the same show...
So there you have it, a magnificent album containing none of the songs they're best known for, a number one hit on the UK album charts, a record that is getting on for thirty years old and, I'm afraid, the last time they were truly great. After this they splintered into the various side projects, came back together for the World In Motion single, splintered again, re-united to make an album in a doomed attempt to save Factory from bankrupcy and then split again and then there's all of that leading up to the very bitter position they're in today. I've read all three of Hooky's books and very entertaining they are too. I've read Bernard's book. I've read other books about Factory and New Order. I've read countless articles about them and interviews with them. And what have I learned? That they made some my favourite records and that in the end, despite the fact that the story of New Order, the mythology, is hugely important, what really matters is the tunes.
Day 4 of New Order week and I've got two live performances for you and some discussion of related recorded work. First up is this, sometimes described as one of the two Holy Grails of NO live bootlegs (the other is the debut performance at The Beach Club in Shudehill, Manchester, 1980).
On June 30th 1983 New Order played a gig at Cabaret Metro in Chicago. It was a blisteringly hot day, temperatures in the club reaching the high 90s. New order were famously hit and miss during this period, partly due to their own approach to playing and partly due to having equipment that was totally unsuited to live performance, sequencers and synths and drum machines. In Chicago the crowd were already a bit irate and not just due to the heat. The support act had finished over two hours before New Order took the stage. The gear makes it through the first four songs and then during Truth the sequencer starts to misbehave. The y make it through Leave Me Alone with no problems but the long gap between the end of that song and the start of Your Silent Face is punctuated by bleeps and bursts from the sequencer and audience members and bass players complaining about the heat. From here on in it's a kind of NO unplugged gig. The tape of this gig recently found its way into the hands of blogger and New order enthusiast The Power Of Independent Trucking and he has presented it for our enjoyment here with a FLAC download. These are his words about the rest of the gig...
Eventually, “Your Silent Face” starts. It devolves into a unique and fascinating exposition on what a sequencer-using band does when the sequencers are failing mid song - Steve Morris jumps behind the drum kit far earlier than usual, and essentially drives the song to its skittering end as the sequencers never recover. I think this take is spectacular and I think you’ll agree.
Barney then makes reference on stage to equipment and power problems, mentions the band’s just going to jam, and Steve then pounds out the drum riff for “Denial”. Instead of jamming, the band then finishes the set with four straight sequencer-free tracks, ending on the majestic “In A Lonely Place” well into the wee hours of the morning.
There is no jamming, no acoustic “Blue Monday” despite the venue owner’s misremembered statements made over the years since. It’s possible of course at some point these did exist and were edited out from this tape upstream, but I doubt it and all other recollections of this gig fail to mention any acoustic “Blue Monday” performances.
While listening to this on Youtube the other night a link in the sidebar caught my eye which was this one, a gig from 1986 at the Spectrum Arena in Birchwood, Warrington. The venue no longer exists but there is a large Ikea near where it was. There's progress for you. This is a soundboard recording opening with stand alone single State Of The Nation and then taking in songs from the previous six years.
State of the Nation The Village Broken Promise As It Is When It Was Your Silent Face Confusion Age of Consent Temptation Sunrise (cut short) Blue Monday Shellshock
Sunrise is cut short due to the tape running out and according to some of those that were there the group did return for an encore, long after the lights had gone up and half the audience had left, running through Love Will Tear Us Apart but this hasn't been recorded. This is a good quality recording and the band sound on fire, a slightly misfiring Confusion aside.
The Warrington gig was a few months before the release of Brotherhood. Brotherhood is a funny record. I listened to it the other day. It doesn't have the great leap forward of Power, Corruption And Lies nor the newly found confidence of Lowlife and lacks the skyscraping quality of Technique's songs. It's a bunch of songs plus Bizarre Love Triangle. It's is divided into side 1 (rockier songs) and side 2 (dancier songs) and side 2 is the clear winner. Bizarre Love Triangle is arguably their greatest song and the three that follow are all top notch (All Day Long, Angel Dust, Every Second Counts). Side 1 is five songs that are all good album tracks but together they seem to lose something. Maybe it is the division into two separate sides that doesn't work and sequenced differently they'd stand out more. The five are Paradise, Weirdo, As It Is When It Was, Broken Promise and Way Of Life. Broken Promise is reminiscent of early NO, powerful, stacked full of guitars and churning lyrics. As It Is When It Was is a hidden beauty, starting slow and sparse but gaining in pace and urgency, the Love Will Tear Us Apart bass riff reappearing, a song that would make a top ten of New Order non-single songs. As would Way Of Life which burns and fizzes with some great guitar-bass interaction, Hooky reversing the Age Of Consent bassline. Paradise and Weirdo are decent songs but definitely album tracks- Paradise a bit lightweight and an odd opener to these ears. Weirdo is stronger, pumping bass and drums but a bit tinny maybe. If you go to Youtube you'll find people saying that these two are their favourite NO songs. I wouldn't go that far but I've been re-listening to side 1 this week and found a lot in these songs to enjoy. Maybe it's just that I don't listen to them that often and the novelty gives them freshness. It's hard to get away from the feeling though that overall as an album, in some ways, it hasn't got the same magic that Power, Corruption And Lies, Lowlife or Technique have.
Barney blames the overdubbing, too much of it, too many instruments layered on top of each other. Brotherhood was surrounded by some of New Order's best singles too- True Faith and Touched By The Hand Of God both came out within the following year and Shellshock and State Of The Nation preceded it (Ok, maybe neither of the 1986 pair is quite as good as the 1987 pair). It just goes to show that, despite all the tensions within the group (and according to both Hook and Sumner there were many by this point), they were still capable of making truly great songs but their insistence on dividing songs into singles and albums (which I applaud on the whole) meant that the album got shortchanged a bit. Stephen Morris has said that dividing Brotherhood into rock and dance sides didn't quite work and I think I'd agree. On the other hand Hooky likes the five rockier songs together, showing, as he sees it, 'what the band was all about'. So it goes.
By 1985 New Order were well into their stride, the faltering, unsure, step-by-step progress of the early years well in the past. 1983's album Power, Corruption And Lies more or less invented electronic indie and contained at least two career high points (Age Of Consent and Your Silent Face) as well as the blueprint for Blue Monday. The run of singles from 1982 to 1985 takes in Temptation, Blue Monday, Confusion, the peerless Thieves Like Us plus its B-side Lonesome Tonight. Then they put out another album, recorded in 1984 and released in May '85- Lowlife.
Lowlife only has eight songs on it but almost every one is a winner, disco and rock seamlessly intertwined. The sound combines full on synths and sequencers with Hooky's distorted bass providing the rock ballast. Stephen's drumming, with plenty of digital delay, is crisp and loud. The guitars are trebly and choppy, like Velvets era Lou Reed on acid. Lowlife is the first New Order album to contain singles and the first to feature band photographs on the cover (which Peter Saville then obscured by wrapping in tracing paper). From opener the Salford country & western of Love Vigilantes with Barney's enigmatic Vietnam War lyric to the magnificent closer Face Up this is a record I never get bored of. Face Up is huge, a glorious synth and bass intro, sampled choral voices, synth drum pads and then ... whoosh, we bounce along in NO disco heaven. The lyrics contain the usual mix of clunkers and the perfect skewering of life (see 'your hair was blonde, your eyes were blue, guess what I'm gonna do to you' and 'we were young and we were pure and life was just an open door'). Up until 1989 the lyrics were usually a group effort. For Technique Barney took over lyrics and vocals completely, something else Hooky rues as a nail in the coffin.
Sub-culture is here too, another disco-rock peak, Barney's vocals sounding like a guide vocal that he never bothered to redo (and all the better for it). That one fingered synth intro, followed by the drum machine and then the dark lyrics about walking in the park late at night and shafting on your own. Sub-culture is a close cousin of The Perfect Kiss and builds similarly, synth drums and bass riffs piling on top of each other. It was later released as a single in remixed form (by John Robie, an inferior version really with backing vox and synth stabs. Peter Saville was so disappointed he refused to design a sleeve for it). Hooky points to Robie's influence as being one of the turning points that ruined the group. Before Robie they didn't write songs following any rules- after Robie Bernard insisted on all the songs being in his key and eventually they became verse-chorus- middle eight formulaic. But let's leave the blame game aside and stick to the songs. Elegia is their intense instrumental tribute to their former, deceased frontman. I posted the unedited fifteen minute version last autumn and if you haven't heard it you should seek it out. The Perfect Kiss is inserted as track two, a peak among peaks (although it's an edited version on Lowlife. You need the full-on 12" version, a single for which the 12" format might have been invented). The Perfect Kiss has peaks and troughs, bass playing that is something else entirely, and several climaxes. This Time Of Night and Sooner Than You Think are both good album tracks. If pushed I could live without Sooner.... I suppose. But today's song is this one, closing side one, Sunrise. Possibly the rockiest song on Lowlife it opens with descending synth chords before being joined by a superb bass riff -then the whole band join in, pronto. The guitars rattle, bottle tops on the strings to get a Morricone sound and Bernard's vocal is straining, at the top of his register. The synths continue to wash away. The guitar, bass and drums drive away. At the end Bernard thrashes the toggle switch on his guitar. Done.
More early New Order. Movement was released in December 1981 and was by all accounts a difficult album to make. The group were unbalanced and their way of working was broken (during the Joy Division days the group would jam and Ian Curtis would spot the good bits which would then be worked into songs). No one especially wanted to sing and none of them could play and sing at the same time (this would become part of their sound in the 80s- Barney's guitar playing filling the bits where he's not singing and Hooky frequently carrying the melodies. Weaknesses become strengths). Movement was produced by Martin Hannett but the relationship between the group and the producer had broken down. According to Hooky 'Hannett would lock himself in the control room, saying 'Start playing, I'll come out if I hear anything I like'. He never came out'. Hannett was also suing Factory at the time which can't have helped.
Out of this came an album which sounds a bit like Joy Division but without Curtis, trying to move forward but not really managing it. The real movement would come with the singles- Everything's Gone Green, Procession, Temptation and the second album. Having said that time has left some highlights- Doubts Even Here, The Him and ICB all have glimmers of the future and the sounds are becoming more varied. The peak is the opener, the only song on the album which is just guitar, bass and drums and the one that Hooky sings. Dreams Never End is a properly exciting song, from the intro of driving bass and guitar lines playing around each other onwards.
Peter Saville's cover art, Italian futurism again, is beautiful.
As a bonus here's a lost child of the New Order story. In 1982 New Order recorded a second Peel Session. Two of the songs would later appear on Power, Corruption And Lies, an album which redefined them and their music. The two other songs were a cover of Keith Hudson's dub reggae song Turn The Heater On (an Ian Curtis favourite and recorded for him, I've posted it before) and Too Late.
Too Late is a moody song, synth drums, beautifully distorted bass and glacial pace, haunting and the equal of most other songs from around this time. According to Hooky when they were having a go at recording it Bernard had nipped out of the studio. The other three put some backing vocals down. When Barney returned he showed his disgust at this and walked out. It was never finished. And in Hooky's view this was one of the starting points for Bernard grappling for control of the band. As a result of this Too Late would only ever appear as the Peel Session version.
Before my holiday I promised/threatened some New Order posts, so that's what's happening for the next few days I think- nuclear war and a Nazi takeover of the US notwithstanding. It is utterly appalling that the President cannot condemn actual Nazis on the streets of the a US city, murdering people. It is utterly appalling that Nazis still exist to demonstrate openly. This is the swill that comes to the fore following Trump's election, Farage's games, Brexit, 'populism' and austerity. Racists emboldened to show their faces in daylight.
Back to the music. Procession is an overlooked New Order single being neither the defiant 'we're alive' rallying cry of Ceremony nor the 'we've just invented dance-rock' blast of futurism that is Everything's Gone Green. In his book Substance- Inside New Order Hooky names Procession as one of four key songs that led the group out of Joy Division's rock and into New Order's electronics. During the 80s most New Order songs were written by the group jamming and then identifying the best bits and working them into a song. Procession was different, largely written by Stephen Morris (the lyrics and vocal lines plus a lot of the keyboard parts apparently). No sequencers at this point but the road to Blue Monday (and beyond) is clearly present. The 7" single was released in September 1981, a few months before Movement. The other side is Everything's Gone Green, a much more significant song, a huge, throbbing piece of dance-rock and a massive step forward. Procession gets overlooked. Which it shouldn't.
Peter Saville's sleeve came in nine different colours (for the record I own two, a blue and a green) and is based on Italian futurist designer Fortunato Depero's work. Everything's Gone Green would be released later in 1981 as a full length 12" version. These songs were the last New Order songs produced by Martin Hannett. According to Hooky, Hannett made Barney do the vocals forty three times. Hannett was bereft without Ian Curtis and had little time for the three that were left behind. In return Hook, Sumner and Morris had had enough of Hannett and his methods and habits and felt they'd learned enough to produced themselves. Procession is light and poppy, with synths to the fore, but also dense and uptight. The vocals are muffled and indistinct in places. Hooky's bass is still very much a Joy Division bassline and Stephen Morris's drums are as urgent and precise as ever. There are backing vocals from Gillian, a bit of light in the shade, and it all comes together with the 'your heart beats you late at night' vocal followed by some spindly guitar from Barney and then a sudden end before the synth outro. Compared to the largely dour Movement from later that year things are moving forward though, clearly.
Another day another Weatherall post. This one is an hour and ten minutes mix of songs about the sea. The Convenanza festival has moved this year from Carcasonne to Sète and its Theatre by the Sea, hence the mix's theme.
1. An Ocean Only You Can See / Ian William Craig 2. Atlantis / Deuter 3. Soft Ocean / The Kramford Look 4. An Ocean Goitia Deitz 5. Atlantic Postcard / The Holydrug Couple 6. Ocean Strings / Reverso 68 7. The Sun And The Sea / Barry Adamson 8. Sea The Swell / Talmun Shud 9. Sight On Sea / Magical Ring 10. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch / Music By Pinkunoizu 11. Life By The Sea [ Peel Version ] / The Names 12. Oceans / A.C.R. 13. Deep Sea / Kurt Vile 14. Sea Of Love / Like A Tim and Gina V.D'Orio 15. Sea Song / The Unthanks
And in a seemingly non-stop procession of output Weatherall and Nina Walsh's Woodleigh Research Facility have contributed a track to a box set celebrating twenty five years of SOMA. This is a lively, thunderous and messy piece of acid.
This one crept back into my subconscious and playlist a few weeks ago and having revisited the single, the original version, the remix and parent album I can confirm it's still stuck there. New Fast Automatic Daffodils were caught up in the Madchester scene and released some sublimely funky indie-dance-rock, sinewy basslines and scratchy guitars, left of centre and off kilter with singer Andy Spearpoint's stream of lyrics adding to the fun- 'the desert grow three miles a year, it just grows, it just grows, I put my pain in a jar, it will be full tomorrow'.
For the remix on the 12" Jon da Silva added some dancefloor electronics and it is still cooking up a storm.
Down on the Atlantic coast at the south west of France the sunsets are, to put it mildly, pretty spectacular and beautiful. Gathering on the beach each night to watch the sun sink into the sea was a ritual for a lot of the holiday makers down there and the locals too. The light that the sun threw out as it descended into the distance was stunning too.
While queuing at Portsmouth trying to get out of the ferry port on Wednesday night I stuck Radio One on, not something I do very often. We got the last twenty minutes of Annie Mac's show where she mainly talked about the recent Radio One Ibiza weekender and played a few tracks, one of which sounded brilliant, a real sundowner (or sun-upper) of a track. And while going through four hundred plus emails yesterday I got one promoting the track in question- Bicep's Glue. Bicep area an Irish duo, bloggers and djs and now makers of music too. Glue has a breakbeat with some reverb on it and then some lovely synths. All warm and blissful. Out now digitally with an album in September.
Tony Wilson died ten years ago today. His legacy is all over this city and (probably) in your record collections and on your hard drives. Manchester and pop culture is a poorer place without him. I've posted Mike Garry and Joe Duddell's tribute to Tony before but Mike Garry's words about him and the world he was part of are always worth hearing again.
Bonjour mes amis- we got back from France late last night following a Dean Cassidy style drive across France and England. You'll be pleased to know that Bayonne, deep into the south west of France, Basque country, is proudly anti-fascist. While I was away news came through of a new Andrew Weatherall solo album, Qualia, due in September on Hoga Nord and a two track dub 12" at the end of August. This song is a trailer for the album- twinkling synths, krauty beats, and a voice saying 'hello'.
And also while I was enjoying the sun, the moules, the frites, the vin, another Music's Not For Everyone appeared. Plenty of catching up to do.
I'm off on my summer holiday today, hitting the road to Portsmouth, an overnight ferry to St. Malo and then one night in Bordeaux. From there we are heading to a campsite north of Bayonne, on the Atlantic coast of south west France. A bit over a week later we are heading north and having four nights in the Vendee near Saint-Jean-de-Monts. So it will be two weeks before there's any action here.
I bought Peter Hook's latest book Substance, which focuses on his time in New Order, for one of my holiday reads. Over the last few days curiosity has got the better of me and I'm already a hundred pages in. Which led me to looking for this clip, a fledgling New Order playing a short set (half an hour, six songs) at Granada Studios in 1981 for a programme called Celebration. According to Hooky there had been a disagreement with the TV crew. Union regulations meant that only a union member could touch the sound desk- words and opinions had been exchanged. The tension is clearly present. However this is also a fascinating document of a band crawling out of tragedy and feeling their way towards a new sound. Dreams Never End (the best song off Movement), sung by Hooky, is driving and aggressive. ICB, Chosen Time, Denial and Truth show the band still playing Joy Division riffs but with the synths and electronic drums finding their way in. Just listen to the opening of Truth, Steven's synth pads hissing, then Hooky's bass and Barney's melodica. Ceremony is played four songs in, guitars rawer and brighter than the studio version. The twenty seven minutes captured here are a treat all these years later but no one there at the time, audience included, seems to be having very much fun.
No doubt once I get back, having got through all 700 plus pages in Substance, there will be further New Order posts to come. See you all in a fortnight.
Something new for Tuesday, from the new Eclectics record label. The Triumph Of Dr. No is a slow motion, dusty track, filmic and intense, from K-Effect. The John Barry horns come in dramatically at the end as Ursula Andress emerges from the sea.
Across the ep there is a remix from Uj Pa Gaz, a resident of Tirana, Albania and then a second track, Metaloxide, which is remixed by El Fulminador of Argentina. Metaloxide has strings and a stuttering drum machine, then synths buzzing. This is a snippet. You can buy The Triumph Of Dr. No from Bandcamp now with the rest of the ep available in August. All four are sounds for long days and hot nights, shuffling slowly in the heat.
Let's start the week- I was going to say working week but it's not a working week for me, I've finished for the summer- with an hour's worth of Mr Weatherall playing dub , all salvaged from the Rotters Golf Club. This is volume 7 in the R.G.C. Archive Hour and is wall to wall Jamaican goodness.
The picture is a page from ID magazine, a dj five way split with Paul Oakenfold, Sasha, Darren Emerson, Fabi Paras and Andrew Weatherall. Weatherall (bottom right, face obscured by a 7" single) describes his occupation as 'trainspotter' and claims to be working on 'a pop long player'.
Steppas Delight
Open Troppen – Mad Professor No Love (Version) – Team Works River Jordan – Dub Dynasty Macky Lane Rock – Mr Dynamic All Stars No Idiot Dub – King Tubby Chalice Man Dub – Sly & Robbie And The Revolutionaries Grounation Rock – Adashanti I Mystic Electro Harakiri – Pecker The Grunwick Affair – Dennis Bovell Cool Stepping – The Simeons Mack At Control – The Simeons Dub Signs – Alpha & Omega Dubbing In Angola – Pablo Moses International Treaty – Joe Gibbs & The Professionals Majestic Dub – Joe Gibbs & The Professionals African Boat Man – Mix Man
If indie guitar bands in 1987 wanted to sound like the band in yesterday's post (The Motorcycle Boy) by 1991 things had moved on. A post- Madchester world had ambitions for a bigger, looser, different sound. In 1991 Shack recorded their second album Waterpistol. Mick Head was inspired by The Stone Roses, The Charlatans and Flowered Up and he was chasing that 60s psychedelic sound, acoustic and electric guitars, crossed with that early 90s groove. In an ideal world Mick's song writing would set him apart. Unfortunately things went wrong- producer Chris Allison had difficulties getting Mick to finish songs and in late '91 the recording studio burned down taking the master tapes with it. Shack's record company went bust soon after. Chris Allison left the DAT tapes in a hire car while on holiday in the US. Bassist John Power joined The La's. Mick got into heroin.
Waterpistol eventually surfaced in 1995 after Allison tracked down the hire car company and the lost DAT tapes, and a German label Marina put it out. By this point Britpop was at its height and Mick's songs should have found an audience but despite rave reviews Mick and Shack remained mired in substance problems. In 1999 a reformed Shack released HMS Fable and began to reap a bit of what they had sewn but Waterpistol remains a lost gem. It's been re-released a couple of times since, by different labels, with different sleeves and different numbers of tracks (mine has twelve songs, the Marina release with the smoking schoolboy on the cover). If you haven't got it, it's well worth tracking down- never has cosmic Scouser psychedelia been so well realised as on this album's songs.
There was a time (1986-1987) when indie guitar records wanted to sound something like this one (or a version of it). Sounding like The Smiths was tricky- Johnny Marr could do things the majority of guitarists couldn't and Morrissey's way with words was pretty unique too. But three chords, a fuzz pedal, bass and drums and some 60s style songwriting was achievable. The Motorcycle Boy were from Edinburgh and made up of Alex from The Shop Assistants and three former members of Meat Whiplash (Paul, Michael and Eddy) plus David Scott on guitar. This song was their debut, out on Rough Trade, and very good it is too. Sadly they then followed a trajectory familiar to a lot of independent groups from those years- NME front cover, indie chart hit, sign to a major, game over.
Something hot and sultry for your Friday morning in the shape of a Mojo Filter edit of Siouxsie And The Banshees' Arabian Knights. The original version was a single from the album Juju, released in 1981. This is a dance floor reworking, with groove and space and Siouxsie's vocals a little distanced. It should function equally well in your kitchen when you open the gin/wine tonight. Free download too.
This song was released thirty years ago today. Let's not get hung up on its age or the passing of time but celebrate a band in their absolute pomp releasing records that changed the world you lived in. New Order come in after the titles and thirty seconds of Gary Davies...
And because the video was pretty significant too...
In 1987 and 1988 the art of making records from samples of other people's records went overground. Following M/A/R/R/S's chart topper Pump Up The Volume in 1987 Tim Simenon's one man band Bomb The Bass went to number 2 in the UK (using some of the same samples). Beat Dis borrowed from a multitude of sources, some 80s hip hop- Public Enemy, Afrika Bambaataa, Kurtis Blow, EPMD, Schoolly D- and also from other sources- James Brown, Bar-Kays, Indeep, Prince, Hashim, Aretha Franklin, Jayne Mansfield and various TV programmes, notably Thunderbirds and Dragnet. It was inventive, exciting and new, making something fresh and new from familiar (and unfamiliar) sounds. A year later S'Express pulled off a similar trick. Unbelievably I haven't posted anything by Bomb The Bass in the seven and a half years before this post.
Twenty five years old recently Warp's Artificial Intelligence compilation was a deliberate attempt to make a dance music compilation that wasn't for dancing to but for listening to at home. It also led to the creation of IDM, a term I still find a bit mystifying and pointless. This is machine music, techno and ambient combining, with groove and melody. The list of artists is second to none, a double vinyl example of Warp's finger being firmly on the robotic pulse in 1992- Autechre, Speedy J, B12, Richie Hawtin (as UP!), Black Dog (as I.A.O.) and Aphex Twin stand out.
The opening track came from the magic hands and brain of Richard D. James- calling himself The Dice Man with a track called Polygon Window (he'd soon go on to release as Polygon Window just to check people were keeping up ). Even among the high quality of the various artists work on A.I. and his own back catalogue at this point Polygon Window stands out, fizzing and buzzing with ideas and invention. What's more, you could dance to this if the mood took you.
I first heard this last week at Echorich's place and have been coming back to it daily since then- a new song from Mick Head, formerly of Shack, The Pale Fountains and The Strands. Michael's new group is The Red Elastic Band and they've got an album ready to release in the autumn, his first for a decade. Mick knows his way around a tune and this one is a lilting, folk-influenced thing, with harmonies and hooks to spare. The video is made up to archive footage of Liverpool in the early-to-mid 1960s and is a treat too.
This is an interesting and dramatic way to start the week. Hannah Peel has an album out soon based around an exploration of space travel and 'one person's journey to outer space, recounting the
story of an unknown, elderly, pioneering, electronic musical stargazer and her lifelong
dream to leave her terraced home in the mining town of Barnsley, South
Yorkshire, to see Cassiopeia for herself'
Musically it combines analogue synths, found sounds, the sound of brass players breathing and spitting, Hannah's voice and a colliery band. If the track below, Sunrise Through the Dusty Nebula, is anything to go by it promises to be very good indeed. This is moving and inventive music, a colliery band with one foot deep underground and one in deep space.
This long instrumental piece from Pan American should be just right for your Sunday morning. It is for mine. It is contemplative and has a tendency to make time disappear. Tea and toast and tunes.
In May 1990 Pop Will Eat Itself released a single just ahead of the Italia 90 World Cup. PWEI intended it as an alternative World Cup theme and let's face it, given how corrupt FIFA is/was, no one would really have batted an eyelid at a dance single by a West Midlands grebo band fronted by an Italian porn star turned politician. Plus, as a song, it's massively good fun. House pianos. Dub bassline. Horns. Fans chanting. Commentary.
Same city as yesterday's post but two decades later, Sharevari is widely credited with being the first Detroit techno record. Named after the Charevari parties and made by A Number Of Names (a three piece plus any number of friends) Sharevari was played on a local radio show and gathered momentum from thereon. In 1981. Yep, 1981. This footage came my way yesterday on Twitter, the crowd dancing to Sharevari at The Scene in Detroit in 1982.
Relentless, robotic rhythm, chanted vocals and a throbbing non-stop synthline. I don't know if Sharevari is the first techno record- there are always people who'll claim there was another from a year earlier- but it is without doubt a very forward thinking and pioneering record.
There's a good chance that if you grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, at some point, having heard a Motown song via your parent's record collection, the telly, a youth club disco or through a film, you bought one of these Motown compilations. You've probably got some of them and their companions in your house. Our parents generation bought the singles. We bought these bumper albums, stacked with up to twenty songs, as many as the grooves could take and still be audible. The cd boom of the 1990s saw the Chartbusters series released on shiny digital disc, often knocked down to a quid or two in HMV. Pound for pound some of the best purchases you could make.
We all like to find the songs hidden away in the corners- the B-sides, the remixes, the album tracks, the ones that only we know about. With Motown it's all about the hits. And a bumper Motown Various Artist compilations post means a bumper song selection today; The Supremes, The Four Tops and The Temptations.
Oh look! More new Andrew Weatherall remixes. Two of them, this time reworking London band The Early Years, makers of experimental, drone, motorik music using guitars and synths. I've posted them before. Weatherall turns in a pair of remixes, each one long and expansive, with melodies and noises and machine rhythms. The first one is lighter, hypnotic and more playful, the second darker and foreboding but with a nice piano break to let some daylight in.
Elsewhere on the ep Andy Bell of Ride and XAM get stuck in. It's out now, four track vinyl at your usual vinyl emporium or download at Sonic Cathedral. All four remixes are on the player below.
Every six months or so I feel the need for some Jimi Hendrix. People are making a lot out of various records from 1967 being fifty years old this year and some of them sound fifty years old in a way, but Jimi's stuff doesn't. In 1967 The Jimi Hendrix experience released two albums, the debut Are You Experienced and then a follow up Axis: Bold As Love. Axis is a step on from the burning hot debut, an exploration of sound and the studio, of Jimi's development as a writer and of psychedelia. Many of the songs on Axis have a confidence to unfold more slowly, to unwind a little. Castles Made Of Sand has long been a favourite of mine- a backwards guitar part, a lazy guitar riff, a laid back groove and Jimi's vocals about impermanence and all things being temporary.
'And so castles made of sand
Fall to the sea
Eventually'
Andrew Weatherall uses The 'No' Tune by Cowboys International, a stylish guitar-led instrumental from 1979, to open his Music's Not For Everyone radio shows. That guitar line can get stuck in your head for some time. It's been going round mine since the end of last week.
Cowboys International were a post punk band, synths and guitars, who released one influential album (The Original Sin, 1979) and some singles and split up in 1980. Cowboys International are notable not just for the album but for the members who passed through the ranks. Founder member Ken Lockie started the band with Keith Levene. Former Clash man Terry Chimes/Tory Crimes played the drums. They were joined at different times by former members of Ultravox, Adam And The Ants, The Banned and Boney M. Yes, that Boney M.
This is a New Order rarity which a friend posted on social media recently which I had forgotten about- I don't have a decent quality rip so there's just the video...
In 1982 Tony Wilson asked New Order for twenty minutes of 'pap' to be played at the opening night of the Hacienda (May 21st 1982). Bernard and Stephen went away and got stuck into the drum machine and synths and came up with this which became known as Prime 5 8 6 (or Video 5 8 6). It is twenty minutes of pulsing rhythm and synthesizers, significant mainly because parts of it later became the version of 5 8 6 on Power, Corruption And Lies, Ultraviolence (off the same album) and Blue Monday (you don't need me to tell you anything about Blue Monday). The band gave it to Touch Magazine who put it out in two parts on cassette in 1982 and then on cd in 1997.
In the picture, a stunning shot of Gillian Gilbert on stage in Brussels, April 1982.
No sooner have I listened to the monthly Music's Not For Everyone, re-listened to it, sought out various songs and then spent some money than Weatherall's back with another edition and the whole cycle begins again.
Contains the following- King Tubby, Jon Hopkins, John Foxx, The Flaming Stars, new Woodleigh Research Facility, Maximum Joy, Odeon and Benni. And much more besides.
A bit of a change of pace and style for Friday but this is one of the best songs of 1990s and if you disagree you're residing somewhere in the land of wrong. TLC's 1994 song Waterfalls was released as a single in the UK on the day I got married (August 5th 1995) and was a smash around the world. Lyrically it is a cautionary tale of AIDs/HIV, promiscuity, contraception and the drugs trade. Sonically it is like being covered in treacle, golden harmonies from honeyed voices, a crisp kick drum and some bass.
I'll try to delve a little further than early 90s dance music compilations at some point but it is the various artists groove I am currently in for this series. Cafe del Mar, a series of albums named after the famous bar in San Antonio, Ibiza, gave birth to that most derided of genres, chill out. The compilation album series runs all the way up to Volume Twenty (released in 2014) but chill had eaten itself long before then.
The first album is a genuinely great compilation, on double vinyl, a round up of songs to listen to as the sun sinks into the Med and as the drugs begin to kick in, compiled by the legendary Jose Padilla himself. The tracklist for Volumen Uno has several tunes I'd take anywhere, among them Penguin Cafe Orchestra's Music For A Found Harmonium, William Orbit's The Story Of Light, Underworld's long builder Second Hand, A Man Called Adam's wonderfully up Estelle and the skyscraping Beatless Mix of Smokebelch II by Sabres Of Paradise. Plus these two, first up a dubby version of Song Of Life...
Moon Duo have released a pair of albums this year that are still very close to my record player- Occult Architecture Volume's 1 and 2. The idea is that they represent light and shade. Put together they make up a pretty stunning double. In among the motorik rhythms, two chord fuzz and woozy psyche there is this gorgeous instrumental where over a shuffly drumbeat and a shaker Ripley Johnson plays some dripping, fluid, molten guitar, some wah wah here and there, like a controlled Hendrix on E. Both records are worth your time and money.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, as Jane Austen never said, that Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume 2 isn't a patch on Volume 1. It's difficult admittedly to gauge what Jane Austen might have made of Aphex Twin- he is entirely outside her cultural frames of reference and doesn't wear breeches. However it is also a truth that every Aphex Twin album contains at least one moment of genius (and I don't chuck the word genius around very often). The moment of beauty genius on Selected Ambient Works 2 is this...
As an album Selected Ambient Works 2 seems to take delight in being even more obtuse than usual. The songs, twenty four of them on the cd edition and one more on the vinyl, are all called Untitled except for track thirteen, Blue Calx. Each track had a corresponding image. Track 20's corresponding image is Lichen. The gently ascending synth chords, slightly wobbling at the edge of distortion, the ever so slighty downbeat turn at just after two minutes, the return of the ascending chords with some crackle, to the fade out are all fucking magical.
Mick Jones turned 62 years old last week so this is a belated happy birthday from me. The photo was taken for a music press interview (either NME or Melody Maker) c.1989, after Mick had recovered from a life threatening bout of pneumonia. Those Stussy bucket hats were highly sought after around this time (and still are today).
Mick was on a roll around this time, despite slipping out of fashion, with Megatop Phoenix coming out in 1990, a hit single with Roddy Frame and The Clash hitting number 1 on the back of the Levi's advert. BAD II's Rush was on the B-side, a good Mick song and one of the best the second line up recorded. It was a decision which go down very well with Joe and Paul apparently.
This is a treat, an hour long mix Nancy Noise has done for an upcoming festival put on by Boy's Own. Nancy will be playing along with Terry Farley, Omar S and a bunch of other Balearic names. This is a summery, up, good vibes mix with some latin, some Frenchness, some afro and plenty of bounce. As a bonus you can download it for free too.
Tracklist...
1. Jeff Kite - Timelapse 2. Dele Sosimi - E go Betta (O'Flynn Edit) 3. Alkalino - Vivo 4. Riccio - Marcela 5. Ric Piccolo - Sube 6. L’Oiseau Dore - Moar 7. Katunga - Palo Bonito (Nick the Record re-edit) 8. Barrabas - Woman 9. The Apostles - Banko Woman 10. Puzzle People - French Fried Boogie 11. Loco Moto 12. Negrocan - Cada Vez 13. Leonidas & Hobbes - Web of Intrigue 14. Nit - Imparfaite
Yesterday mistakes were made here at Bagging Area. The Various Artists post on the Junior Boys Own Collection should have appeared today but due to an administrative error was published yesterday alongside the Orbital post. An inquiry has been carried out which has gone all the way to the very top of this organisation. Rest assured, action has been taken and heads have rolled.
As a result of the erroneous publishing of two posts simultaneously (and being out last night) this is a brief post. Public Enemy are celebrating thirty years in the rap game and have made their new album Nothing Is Quick In The Desert available as a free download. Off you go.
