José Padilla

 

José Padilla has died of cancer aged sixty four. He arrived in Ibiza in 1975 and graduated through the club scene as a DJ, playing Es Paradis and Amnesia before eventually playing sets at the Café del Mar, a bar in San Antonio that looks out over the Mediterranean and where each evening the sun dissolves into the sea. Jose would pioneer an entire new genre of music that would end up being called Chill Out. Padilla played an eclectic mix of music to accompany the sunset and afterwards and as the late 80s became the 90s his DJ sets became the thing of legend. He recorded an Essential Mix for the BBC in 1995, here, that gives an idea of his style. In 1994 he launched a series of compilation albums, out on double vinyl, that brought together the songs he played as the sun went down. Volume One and Two (or Uno and Dos to give them their proper names) are proper slices of mid 90s culture, records to play after a night out, comedown tunes to go with tea, cigarettes and chatter, the buzz of the club wearing off into something warm and glowing, songs for a Sunday morning- William Orbit, Penguin Café Orchestra, Sabres Of Paradise, Leftfield, Underworld, A Man Called Adam, Tabula Rasa...

Sunset At The Café del Mar

I've never been to the Café del Mar, never watched the ball of fire sink into the sea as José spun laidback, downtempo tunes with snaking melodies and blissed out vocals. But José's outlook has had a huge impact on my tastes and record collection, the whole idea of bringing different types of music together as long as they fit the mood, a mish- mash of old and new, dance music and oddities, ambient and Balearic, a world where A Man Called Adam's Estelle, The Art Of Noise, the theme from Hill Street Blues and Music For A Lost Harmonium all live alongside each other. I've spent hours attempting to emulate José's style in the early hours or when making tape compilations or even, now I think of it, with some of the series of Isolation Mixes I did in the spring and summer. 

Theme From Hill Street Blues

It's fair to say that what José pioneered on the shores of the Mediterranean spread worldwide in the 1990s and afterwards, ripples and waves landing on shores a long way from San Antonio. 

José Padilla, RIP.

Gonna Get High 'Til The Day I Die

 

Primal Scream's Don't Fight It, Feel It was one of the songs on Screamdelica that felt truly revolutionary for a group who started as Byrds/ Buffalo Springfield imitators, evolved into a c86 indie band and then reincarnated themselves as leather trousered Stooges rockers. On Don't Fight It, Feel It Andrew Weatherall and Hugo Nicolson made an acid house song and left all traces of the guitar band off it entirely- no guitars, no Throb, not even any of Bobby's singing. Instead Denise Johnson's voice boomed out of the speakers. Weatherall took it all even further on the Scat Mix. Lesser known and heard is the Graham Massey Remix, also from 1991, a juddering Mancunian remix which takes the song into new territory once again, Denise front and centre. 

Don't Fight It, Feel It (Graham Massey Remix)

808 State and Massey were on fire around this time. Their 1990 album 90 is one of the best releases from any of the Manchester groups around that time and sounds surprisingly fresh listened to in 2020. Album opener Magical Dream is a real Bagging Area favourite. In June 1990 me, my then girlfriend and my friend Al had my cassette of 90 on all the way from Liverpool to Glastonbury in Al's car. When we pulled into the field to unload our camping kit, it was Magical Dream spooling on the car's stereo. As we got out of the car and opened the boot a mud- encrusted hippy appeared out of a nearby hedge and asked us if we needed any drugs. 

Magical Dream

Monday's Long Song

 

In April I wrote about a Leeds based band called Bushpilot who have had their recordings from the mid- 1990s re- issued by God Unknown Records. The post is here. Bushpilot made a splendid racket, channelling all kinds of leftfield influences. Former singer Ross recently got in touch to ask if I'd like a copy of their album 23, a beautifully packaged vinyl release (I said yes obvs). In the email he said the album includes a nineteen minute opus, a recording edited down from an original twenty seven minute take. Ross said it was 'like a collaged post punk Can, and was in reality mostly recorded on come downs from being at legendary Morley techno night the Orbit' and I can't add anything to that which is any better. I recommend you hit play and cancel anything else you were planning on doing for the next twenty minutes. 

Then go and buy 23 at Bandcamp. 
 

Sunday Dervish Time

 

There's been a re- issue campaign going on all year of African Head Charge's albums, a box set called Drumming Is A Language 1990- 2011 and an album of outtakes, mixes and dubs titled Churchical Chant Of The Iyabinghi, ten songs/ dubs circa 1990 sequenced as a psychedelic dub trip. Adrian Sherwood and Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah created a unique sound as African Head Charge, percussion and African drums, Sherwood's bass heavy, dubbed out sounds and vocals sampled from religious cultures around the globe. Churchical Chant really needs to be heard as a whole- you can buy it at Bandcamp- but here's a taster, ideal sounds for a Sunday in October. Settle down, ignore the news for a while and soak it up.

Dervish Dub 

Anchor Dragging Behind

There are lots of reasons to love San Pedro's Minutemen. The band was formed as a result of a lifelong friendship between guitarist D. Boon and bassist Mike Watt. They tried to make their music democratic- the bass and guitar and George Hurley's drums would not encroach on each other's areas, guitars would be trebly to give the bass the space to be the bass. All their songs were about something, even if it was just as Mike Watt had it, 'shit from an old notebook'. All three contributed lyrics and almost everything they wrote was a personal or political response to the world their encountered. They had a philosophy, 'we jam econo', that described their dedication to low cost recording and gigging. They rejected looking and acting like clichéd rockstars, loading and setting up their own gear at gigs and taking it down and loading it away afterward. They wrote songs that were short and packed their albums with them, one burst after another. They were part of an early 80s attempt to build an alternative network across the US, venues, fanzines, record labels, promoters, doing it for themselves and their fans and operating outside the mainstream because they didn't want to be inside it. 

In 1983 they released an album called What Makes A Man Start Fires?, an eighteen song record powered by Mike Watt's bass playing. On The Anchor, at two minutes thirty practically a Minutemen odyssey, D. Boon sings about a dream and about Mike Watt's bass, the 'anchor dragging behind'.

The Anchor

If you haven't seen the 2005 documentary about the band, We Jam Econo, you should put aside ninety minutes this weekend and treat yourself. At a time when there's a distinct lack of people to admire, we could all learn something from Boon, Watt and Hurley. 

Me I'm All Smiles

 

There have been a few Echo And The Bunnymen posts in the corner of the internet I frequent in recent days and it's also forty years since the release of their debut album Crocodiles, both of which seemed like good enough reasons to add some more Bunnymen to the ether. There's a recent Bill Drummond interview where he recalled the early days of the group, when they could barely make the change from a D chord to an A chord in time together but when they did, it was magic. The addition of Pete de Freitas on drums, replacing the Echo drum machine, was the final piece of the jigsaw, a truly great drummer who brought genuine musicianship and also originality to the playing. Once de Freitas was in place they found their sound. Using the Velvet Underground as a model, they knew that you only really need two chords if you've got the right guitar tone, a singer who can make silly stuff sound important and a rhythm section who marry power with groove. If the group look good- clothes, hair, cheekbones etc- you've got everything you need. In July 1980 a year after their debut single, The Pictures On My Wall, and two months after their second 7" Rescue (a song full of hooks pulled to the fore and arranged by Ian Broudie), they released their debut album, ten songs long and mystifyingly, brilliantly missing two early Bunnymen classics, Do It Clean and Read It In Books. 

Crocodiles doesn't contain the best songs the band would write, they'd outdo themselves a year later on Heaven Up Here, but it is full of Bunnymen drama and neuroticism, Mac singing of rusty chalk- dust walkers, of being rescued, of stars shining so hard, of the mythical Villiers Terrace and all that jazz, his voice already confident and memorable, while Will, Les and Pete bash away, post punk urgency, spiky guitar parts, some 60s garage rock, some nods to the Doors and a rich, solid bottom end. Will Sergeant, Drummond says, was the heart and soul of the band, a man who thought 'changing chord was selling out' the one who would draw a line and say no- if someone tried to add keyboards or trumpet he'd cut it dead by saying 'it sounds a bit like The Police'. 

Crocodiles finishes with Happy Death Men, clanging, strident 1980 post punk, Sergeant spraying dense guitar parts all over the studio, as the song reaches it freak out finale. 

Happy Death Men

In 1985 while touring Scandinavia the Bunnymen were still moving fast, four albums in and umpteen singles and B-sides. In Gothenburg hey still found room in the setlist for the debut album's title track, extending it out so Mac could drop in lines from his favourite songs. 

Crocodiles (Live April 1985)

It's Not Like It In The Movies

There's something of autumn about Michael Head's last album, Adios Senor Pussycat, recorded by the man himself and his Red Elastic Band- that scouse mysticism and the playing (acoustic guitars, trumpet, piano, slightly psychedelic folk). It's three years now since it came out and it's one of the few more trad guitar albums from recent years that I can still go back to and find fresh. The opening song is called Picasso and like many great album openers starts with found sounds, street noises, seagulls and muffled voices, before the band kick in with a folky rhythm, a saw and little flourishes of guitar. Mick's voice and lyrics have that quality of hard won wisdom, 'It's not like it in the movies/ there may be police involved', life experience coupled with poetic turns of phrase. 

Picasso

I lived in Liverpool for three years as a student, 1988- 1991, and although this song was three decades away then and Mick had a whole stretch of legendary albums and bad luck to go through in the time between, when I hear Picasso it always makes me think of Sefton Park in the autumn, leaves a riot of rust and red, waiting for the bus on Smithdown Road, record and clothes shopping down Bold Street. Weird how a song can do that, play time travel tricks on the mind. 

None

This track, seven minutes of metronomic Norwegian house music, comes in all standard- chunky, mid- paced house rhythm and a little dancing synth topline, some disco effects, a wobbly bass sound- but pretty quickly it's got you in its grip and it won't let go. The breakdown gives you a breather but then Laars takes you straight back in, Giorgio Morodor in Scandinavia on a train sweeping down the coast. 

None

Good Souls

Back in 2000 Andrew Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood purified the Two Lone Swordsmen sound on their triple vinyl album Tiny Reminders. It was a brutalist version of version of techno and electro, machine tooled funk drilled into short, sharp tracks with functional titles- Neuflex, Section, Akwalek, The Bunker, Brootle. It is futuristic, bass heavy, music, clattering drum machines and FX and utterly absorbing. There are also moments of strangely comforting static noise and moments of ambient beauty (It's Not The Worst I've Looked... Just The Most I've Ever Cared). Tiny Reminders demands a much longer, more considered appraisal than this, this is merely to provide some background to today's track of choice. 

Around this period the Swordsmen often remixed other artists. Many of these remixes were white label only, limited releases, much sought after by a small band of followers. It's fair to say that this was not Weatherall at his most assessible. In the list of artists there were retooled are some familiar names (Primal Scream, Dot Allison (with Slam), Stereo MCs and Saint Etienne were all remixed by Andrew previously), some names who seemed to be a more natural fit (Calexico and Lali Puna) but also some surprising ones, not least Starsailor and Texas. Starsailor were post- Britpop band from Wigan, built around the voice of Chorley resident, singer James Walsh. Their mid paced acoustic guitar melancholia filled a need in the early years of the 21st century, a period when guitar bands seemed lost. 

Two Lone Swordsmen took their song 2001 Good Souls and transformed it, sending it miles away from the sound of the band and their influences (Oasis, Jeff Buckley). Weatherall and Tenniswood find a bouncing, reverberating noise and spring, echoes of noises and scratchy sounds and then bring a drumbeat in, a locked dusty groove around which everything else moves. Some foreground synth sounds pan from left to right and back. Water pumps and hissing pistons come in and out. How much of these samples and sounds came from Starsailor's mastertapes and how much from the TLS library is open to question. There's a recurring sound, a hook of kinds that at three minutes leads into the vocal, an isolated, delayed syllable of James Walsh that seems to give a single word... 'Jah'. Then the drumbeat comes back in and the springs, echoes and metallic cracks return and things build into a kind of groove, the dustiness of the bunker they remixed it in, smoke clearly hanging in the air, audible in every snippet of sound. The drums stop and some of the echoes and sounds stagger on, eventually disappearing one by one until five minutes fifty one. It's a long way from home, a long way from the M61, in the early 2000s. 

Good Souls (TLS Remix)

Monday Mix

A few weeks ago I got a message from Tak Tent Radio, an internet radio station broadcasting out of Edinburgh, asking if I'd like to do an hour long mix for them. I was flattered, obviously, and said yes. Ali said musically Tak Tent is a total 'free for all so play whatever you like'. If you have a dig around on their website you'll see that it is with everything from Italo and electro to gospel and Scots folk, ragas and psyche- pop and Aiden Moffatt to Richard Youngs playing Hawkwind and Flux Of Pink Indians. In the end I put together an hour of music that follows in some kind of line from the Isolation mixes I was doing in the spring and summer, ambient and tracks with found sounds, drones and noise, some Durutti Column, some Two Lone Swordsmen and some clattering, spooked out Eno/ Byrne style stuff. The samples in Maurice And Charles's I, Carpenter and the voice of Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken gave me a title and a reference to the ongoing horror show/ political reality TV show that is going on in the USA. It went out yesterday morning  and you can find my Find The President mix to stream at Mixcloud here. 

I almost titled it after Snake's line in this clip... 

Tracklist

• A Man Called Adam: Easter Song Gospel Oak FX/ Speaking In Tongues 
• Daniel Avery and Alessandro Cortini: Interrupted By The Cloud of Light
• Glok: Pulsing (Citadel Ambient Version)
• Jan van den Broeke: Memories
• Jan van den Broeke: Who Is Still Dreaming?
• Steven Legget: Still
• Richard Norris: Water
• Rick Cuevas: The Birds
• Durutti Column: Bordeaux Sequence
• Calexico: Untitled (Two Lone Swordsmen Virus Style Mix)
• Brian Eno and David Byrne: The Jezebel Spirit
• Maurice & Charles: I, Carpenter
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Smokebelch (For Ali)
• Daniel Avery: TBW17

Bardo

 

From a 2017 e.p. by Swedish outfit Fontan, released in advance of their appearance at Andrew Weatherall's annual Convenanza festival in south west France, this remix by fellow Swede Mythologen is a throbbing, propulsive, six minute slice of upbeat, psyche- kraut. Starts with noise, a stuttering helicopter coming in to land coming in to land and then an urgent motorik beat. Organ plays around over the top, synthesizers adding texture and melody. Single minded fun. 

Bardo (Mythologen Remix)

Apricots

 

In March London via Belfast duo Bicep released a new track. Inspired by their globetrotting DJ and gigging exploits it was called Atlas. After the brilliance of their 2017 album and songs like Glue and Aura at first I found Atlas a little underwhelming, a tad too familiar. Since then I've stuck it onto various mix CDs and playlists and it sounds like one of this year's gems...

A rolling beat, distant female backing vox, those euphoric/ heart tugging synthlines, it was made to be played through huge sound systems to fields of young people going nuts at sunset. Instead it has soundtracked the madness of 2020 and the world we're now in, somewhere between the last lockdown, the loosening of the summer (in some parts of the country at least, not so much round here) and whatever is coming next week- another lockdown of some description.

Last week Bicep announced the release of their second album, Isles, early next year and put out another track to complement Atlas. Apricots  has a sharp kick drum, some cavernous space around the percussion and vocal samples borrowed from some traditional Malawian singers and the Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir. I'm sure this kind of trance/ rave is aimed at people younger than me but it's definitely pushing my half century old buttons at the moment.

Self

One of the albums that came out at the start of the year and was a little lost in the madness of Covid chaos in February and March was Julian Cope's Self Civil War, his 35th album apparently. Cope is so prolific that it's difficult to keep up sometimes. I bought his John Balance Enters the Underworld album, out in 2019, a five track album of instrumentals, and despite its excellence ait didn't seem to stick with me. Self Civil War is a different story,, a return to the freewheeling, psychedelic pop, time travelling Julian Cope, and an album with uptempo ballads about Einstein and Odin, songs with acoustic guitars, piano and horns, ooh ooh oohs and ba ba bas, punning titles such as You Will Be Mist and more self- explanatory ones like My Facebook, Your Laptop and Requiem For A Dead Horse. When he was touring in February, introducing songs with patter that was longer the song he was about to play and just as entertaining, Julian said everyone is engaged in a self civil war- and he speaks from experience. 

The Great Raven

You can buy Self Civil War from Head Heritage. And you probably should. 

Machine

 

Roisin Murphy's releases over the last couple of years have been so consistently good and so irrepressibly fresh that I was a little concerned that the album might not live up to the high standards she has set. Machine, out last week, proves that there was no need to worry. In 2018 she put out four 12" singles made with producer Maurice Fulton one of which- All My Dreams- was the single of that year as far as I was concerned. For Machine she's hooked up with Sheffield DJ and producer Richard Barrett (otherwise known as Parrot and/ or Crooked Man) and the ten songs that make up the album are all unnervingly brilliant, supercharged house/ disco/ deep house hybrids aimed squarely at the dancefloor. Opener Simulation starts with strings and a kickdrum and Roisin holding forth, 'I will make my own happy ending' and from there on in Roisin and the music are fused together, one entity- Roisin Machine. The following song, Kingdom Of Ends, is a seemingly neverending build up, synths and drums going crazy but never giving in to doing the obvious thing- to climax with a massive drop- but continuing, twisting round and around. At the start of this song, over bouncing bass and buzzing synths she says 'this is easier than I expected', which is laugh- out- loud funny under the circumstances. 

The songs on Machine segue into each other, sequenced like a DJ set, with a perfect ebb and flow. Something More and Incapable have both been released as singles and both are better than any other deep house bangers you'll hear this year. Murphy's Law and Narcissus are disco masterclasses. Album closer Jealousy starts with a holler and a roller-coaster bassline, strings sweeping in and Roisin bringing human emotions to the song, a synthesis of classic house and full throttle disco, over and over, the last song of the night. Stunning stuff that you have to give into. 

СТИВИ

 

One of my favourite songs of 2019 was Steve Cobby's acoustic guitar and mellotron beaut As Good As Gold, the opening song on his album Sweet Jesus (the one with the highly freaky, airbrushed cover art). It was inspired by the folk rock playing of Led Zep 3 as much as the Balearic sounds he's known for. Here, remind yourself or introduce yourself...

Steve has since then released two new albums, one in March this year, the Russian titled СТИВИ (Stevie) and then in May a follow up called Nostlagia Intensa. I thought I'd written about both but checking my back pages it appears I haven't written about either (although I did post his former group's first new material in twenty years, the new ep by Fila Brazillia, MMXX). Recording in his garden shed out in the East Riding Steve has moved to a more live instrument led sound on this year's pair. The familiar Cobby influences and sound are present- downtempo, jazzy, funk with washes of ambient sound, hip hop drums and seductive melodies. The song titles are as intriguing as ever- The Common Weal, The Hindu Kush, Dandelion Clocks, I'll Tickle Your Catastrophe, Swimming In Amber- and Steve's ever questing, always creative nature makes for sets of songs that are never dull and always full of wonderful moments. He's been keeping his guitars very close to hand in 2020, both albums filled with funky riffs, fluid runs and sparkling toplines. Having freed himself from the write/ record/ release cycle Steve has become a cottage industry, putting down tracks and working on them until there's enough for an album and then enjoying the freedom to release at will on the internet, especially via an artist friendly site like Bandcamp. Here is СТИВИ  and here is Nostalgia Intensa. 

Loco

 

There has been a rush of albums released recently (and earlier this year), so many that it's been difficult to keep up- A Certain Ratio, Roisin Murphy, GLOK, Richard Norris, Rickard Javerling, Daniel Avery and Denise Johnson have all been competing for my listening time and I haven't got anywhere near new ones from Bob Mould, Doves and Thurston Moore. Earlier this year Steve Cobby released not one but two new albums and I'm still getting to know them. Andy Bell (Ride and GLOK not Erasure) has an album out at the end of this week. There's the nine track Unloved remix e.p. and umpteen singles and e.ps by a variety of artists. While this year has been grim in so many ways the amount of outstanding new music has been a flood. So, some album reviews to follow this week as I pick my way through the some of the above.

A Certain Ratio's new album, Loco, is a ten song record that is a near perfect summation of all their good qualities. It nods its hat repeatedly to their forty year history and past glories while also sounding fresh and like a band reborn. They kept their hands in with irregular gigging for much of the 21st century but the deal they signed with Mute has freed them from the day jobs and given them the freedom, the time and the space (and presumably the financial security) to write and record. The result is Loco, their first new album since 2008. I posted Yo Yo Gi in August, an 808 and cowbell led house workout, a dance song that takes 1990's Spirit Dance as its starting point and breaks out from there. On side one closer Always In Love Jez's vocals recall the A&M years of Your Blue Eyes and The Big E. Tony Quigley's sax riffs vividly point to the mid 80s funk years of Force. The guitar/ bass/ drums core of Martin Moscrop, Jez Kerr and Donald Johnson keep harking back to the group's past and Denise Johnson voice's adorns four songs, her appearance always a lead vocal more than a backing vocalist, and her tragic passing in between completing the record and its release is sad beyond words. The album's closing song Taxi Guy is a song developed live during the on and off tour they undertook in 2018 and 2019, whistles and drums and funk rhythms, Brazilian percussion and chants, a re-tooled Si Fermir O Grido. 

But there's plenty on Loco to suggest ACR aren't stuck in their history- the driving bass and dense electro/ rock of Friends Around Us make for a strong opener, especially after the laid back first half of the song. There is overdriven guitar and funky bass on Supafreak with Factory Floor's Gabe Gurnsey on guest vocal and space age indie disco on Berlin, slightly kraut, slightly Factory but also very 2020. On Get A Grip there's another guest spot, a slinky guest vocal from Sink Ya Teeth's Maria Uzor over dense funk and wigged out synths. ACR were always a group for whom dance rhythms and the groove were primary obsessions, pioneers of what came to be known as punk- funk and still moving forward a decade later when the Hacienda was the centre of the story. This album adds plenty to their story with the gloom and ghostly funk of their early years now updated in vibrant 2020 style. 

Monday's Long Song

 

The internet is a wonderful thing- the ability to share across borders and time zones and to connect with people you'd never have otherwise come into contact with never fails to surprise me. 

An internet friend originally from London and now based in Japan got in touch to send me some music from Russia and which now I've played through many times since, no small feat given the track is twenty minutes long. Vladimir Karpov makes music as X.Y.R., described on his Bandcamp page as 'Soviet synthesiser designs'. Echoes Of Time is a long ambient piece with found sounds, rippling analogue synths, subdued drum pulses and birdsong. The A- side, Black Monk In the Dunes, is the same length and pulls off the same magic. You can find both here. 

Trouble

 

Sinead O'Connor is back, a single released on Friday that is as powerful, moving and heartfelt as anything she's done in the past. Never one to shy away from real life issues and always prepared to wear her heart on her sleeve Trouble Of The World is a cover of a traditional song made famous by Mahalia Jackson (who was on the stage at the March On Washington in August 1963 and was the person who drove Martin Luther King to go off his script when he made his I Have A dream speech- 'tell it Martin, tell them your dream' she is said to have told him). The cover was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and all the proceeds will go towards BLM. It was produced by David Holmes in Belfast, a place steeped in it's own history of civil rights and protest. The video was directed by Don Letts. Buy it at Bandcamp. 

I posted this song earlier this year, back in April which seems a long time ago now, but it's worth posting again and going back to. The Emperor's New Clothes is a song about more personal issues- fame, boyfriends, pregnancy, advice being offered, people's views of her and how she should look, being a single mother- but as Sinead knows the personal is also the political. 

Take It Way Down Low

'1987/ All I wanna Do Is Fly...' sings Jason Spaceman on Come Down Easy, a blues lament/ ode to altered states and the aftermath (based on the gospel/ blues standard In My Time Of Dying, a song purloined by Dylan and Zeppelin before them). This version, the demo, is on the Forged Prescription album that pulls together alternate versions and takes of the songs that made up Spacemen 3's The Perfect Prescription. Over a circular acoustic guitar sequence, the blues played in Rugby, Jason splicing gospel into a late 80s psychedelia, there's some lovely wobbly sounds, and a spindly guitar line occasionally audible. In the third verse Jason goes full on and psyched out with the line 'Meet me children meet me/ Meet me at the top of the sky' and then after promises to shake it and feeling alright he wants to 'take it way down low'. The full trip. 

Come Down Easy (Forged Prescriptions Demo Version) 

Loveless

1991's My Bloody Valentine album Loveless was famously the product of a marathon recording process, endless studios and Kevin Shields' perfectionism. The song Loomer, only two minutes thirty eight seconds long, is as disorientating and otherworldly as anything recorded that year and as flatly distorted and odd as anything on the album. From the opening burst of noise it's the sort of song that makes you think your stereo is broken. Fuzz, Kevin's tremelo bar technique, the glide guitar, bending the strings in and out of tune, what sounds like waves of reverb, layers of recorded sound and Belinda Butcher's vocals coming through the speakers as if through thick fog in the dark. The lyrics are a mystery too, 'tip toe down to holy places/ where you are going now/ don't turn around/ little girls/ in their party dresses/ didn't like anything there/ pretty boys with their sunshine faces/ carrying their heads down'. 

Loomer