Saturday Live

More gold from the vaults of Tony Wilson's late 80s Granada TV programme The Other Side Of Midnight. This episode went out on 6th November 1988, Manchester at the centre of a culture storm based around Fac 51, the Hacienda. For this episode the hardcore Hacienda crowd have decamped a short distance south to Victoria Baths on Hathersage Road. In the first section Tony Wilson presents (in a rubber wetsuit) an item about waterproof cameras and rubber wear, occasionally and knowingly dropping in the word acid. The very tall Manchester face and clothes shop owner Richard Creme models some rubberwear. Wilson promotes North: The Sound Of The Dance Underground, a compilation album put together by Mike Pickering, that sounds like November 1988 as much as anything else does. 

Then we cut to the real business, A Guy Called Gerald playing live, the mighty Voodoo Ray bouncing round the Victorian baths, assisted by Graham Massey of 808 State. In the pool, as the bass drum kicks, clubbers frolic on inflatables. After another awkward interview Gerald returns and then part two starts at 12.52, dancing, smoke machines, whistles and cavernous bass. Pete Waterman is interviewed poolside, discussing clubs, music and acid house, and then we go back to the dancers and some water aerobics, Wilson gamely trying to pull everything together. You're left with the slightly frustrating sense that the real party is elsewhere, off camera or happened once the cameras were turned off. DJ Graeme Park shows up by the pool, answering questions about the music and attempts to ban it and then we cut back to the dancers. A snapshot of a time and place, the podium dancers throwing their arms around and showing once again that in the late 80s the crowd are the real stars. 

This is one of the tracks from North: The Sound Of The Dance Underground, House Fantaz- ee by D C B (a Mike Pickering alias). The big hitters on the album were/ are Voodoo Ray, T- Coy's Carino and Annette's Dream 17, three tracks that still have the power to move today but the rest of the album still has plenty to commend it, thirty five years on, late '88 bottled. 

House Fantaz- ee 

Weatherall Remix Friday Fourteen

A trip back to September 1997 today for this week's Weatherall Remix Friday and a pair of Two Lone Swordsmen remixes of The Money- Penny Project. The intention of this series was to highlight and spotlight some of the lesser known and less celebrated Weatherall remixes and this release definitely falls into that category. The Money- Penny Project was an alias for French producer Benoit Bollini and came out on London label Nuphonic, a label that lasted from 1995 to 2002. 

The first remix is brief by Weatherall standards, sub- five minutes and in semi- ambient techno territory, skittish synths and percussion with a background rumble. It's not quite in the vein of Two Lone Swordsmen's Stay Down album, released a year later but it could be a step on the road towards the sound they found on that album (a submerged and murky, ambient/ techno album, abstract electronic music music made by stoned submariners).

Clarisse- C (Two Lone Swordsmen Hor Fen Mix)

Flip the disc over though and the B-side gives up much more, the twelve minute splendour of the Double Mutator Mix. This one rattles and spins, the drums skipping as the whirring, clicking noises bounce around, the bass reverberates and distorted voices echo in and out, like someone tapping on the portholes of the submarine while a small dub/ house/ techno party goes on inside. At five and half minutes in some angelic choral sounds break in, sirens maybe, pulling our intrepid underwater crew towards the rocks. At nine thirty there's a sensation of a shaft light suddenly breaking in, of surfacing from the depths, taking us back up above the waves and into the air. 

Clarisse- C (Two Lone Swordsmen Double Mutator Mix)

Spirit Dance

Jay- Son's track Spirit Dance came out on Leeds label Paisley Dark a month ago. It's a bit of a thumper, a six minute jolt of twisting, psychedelic acid/ techno, with a bassline that rises and falls, crisp drums, jagged synth stabs and voices in the distance, slightly distorted and out of earshot, coming into focus occasionally to talk about spirits and shamanism. All quite tense and intense.  

The EP comes with four remixes, one each from Hogt I Tak, Hunterbrau, Keith Forrester and The Machine Soul, each one progressively more wigged out than the previous- taken together quite the trip. The EP is at Bandcamp. 

Stop Apologising

This is my what seems like weekly David Holmes post, the newest single from his forthcoming album arriving yesterday, a perfectly timed piece of words and music for those of us who feel up to their knees/ neck in things at the moment. Stop Apologising is three and a half minutes of pulsating electro- disco, glam stomp and rattling snares and Raven Violet singing of how overthinking, catastrophising, inaction and how we should all find the power and strength to live more freely. There's a nod to psychedelic therapy in there too. 

As with the three previous releases there are some remixes of Stop Apologising to push the song in a more thumpy, clubby direction. Horse Meat Disco weigh in with a pair of runaway, pumped up, stomping remixes directly aimed at the space near the glitterball. Colleen 'Cosmo' Murphy strips the song down into bassline and FX and clipped guitar, a  technicoloured funk version. All can be found here. 

The album, Blind On A Galloping Horse, comes out on 10th November and I'm calling it early, it's going to feature highly in end of year lists. Holmes is staking out some ground with the album lyrically, a  response to the current and recent insanities of the world, an album taking in the personal and the political, a record about inspiration and loss and trying to find a space in which to live. The three singles released over the last two years  have already taken in politics, populism and the power to resist it (Hope Is The Last Thing To Die), the collective strength and inspiration found in youth movements and subcultures (It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love) and a rollcall of the great innovators and artists of the recent past (Necessary Genius)- David's response to the internal and external world he and we live in, someone who has something to say and has found the words to say it. More power to him. 

Take A Drag Or Two

More Velvet Underground following yesterday's Sunray/ Sonic Boom/ Ocean post. Today's post has The Velvets via Liverpool and Barking. The photo above is of Eric's in Liverpool, not the original Eric's- that closed a long time ago, 1980- but a live venue on Mathew Street under the same name and logo. Since The Vinyl Villain's guest post here a few weeks ago I've been vaguely obsessed with one of the performances in his post- Echo And The Bunnymen, a group firmly connected to Eric's, playing live with Billy Bragg, covering The Velvets' Run, Run, Run on OGWT in 1985. 

Will and Billy have the Velvet twin guitar drone/ wired lead line nailed with Pete's thumping backbeat covering the Mo Tucker thump. Ian McCulloch gives it the full big hair, big coat, alternative rock star frontman, kicking off with 'show me the way to go home' and squealing/ crooning/ grunting as required. 

In 1985 The Bunnymen set out for a tour of Scandinavia, a tour Ian has referred to as 'the last great Bunnymen tour'. They played support act to themselves, playing a set of covers every night, then going off for a break before returning to play their own songs. Many of the covers were chosen by Will Sergeant- Action Woman and She Cracked- along with Bunnymen favourites by Dylan, Television, The Doors and The Velvets. This take of Run, Run, Run was recorded onstage in Gothenburg by Swedish radio.

Run, Run, Run (Live in Gothenburg)

Will has also spoken of his enjoyment of the Scandinavian tour, playing the support set of covers through practice amps in small halls with no stage, staying at the promotor's house and having breakfast with them. 'I think', Will said, 'it was the last time we were a band really. The next tour we played was stadiums. I hated that. Playing places like Wembley... was everything the Bunnymen wasn't about'.

Run, Run, Run was on The Velvet Underground's debut, the banana album/ The Velvet Underground And Nico. Lou Reed wrote in on the back of an envelope while on the way to a gig at Cafe Bizarre. It's a belter of a song, with those speed freak guitars, rumbling rhythms and lo- fi, reverb production. Lou''s cast of characters- Teenage Mary, Margarita Passion, Seasick Sarah, Beardless Harry- are all on the streets of New York looking for a fix and/ or to be saved, drugs and religion mixed up. Lou's guitar solo is unlike other guitar solos from 1967, a trebly, wired, atonal freak out. 

Run, Run, Run

Monday's Long Song

Edit: this should have published eight hours ago but gremlins prevented it. Apologies to anyone eager for today's post- better late than never. 

Back in 2006 Sunray recorded a single with Sonic Boom, a cover of Ocean by The Velvet Underground. Sunray's cover is a thirteen minute voyage of blissed out drones, led by organ and wobbly guitars, Sonic Boom on board all the way for the slo- mo, frazzled psychedelia. Epic in every sense. 

Ocean

Lou Reed wrote Ocean around the time of the sessions for Loaded but it didn't make the album. It turned up on his self titled debut in 1970, then on the 1974 Velvets live album 1969: The Velvet Underground Live and then the studio version finally seeing the light of day on VU in 1985. The tripped out lyrics- waves crashing down by the shore, the sea as a drug- are thrown into disarray by the second verse with its lines about insects, selfish men, Lou being driven nearly crazy and being a lazy son. The playing is superb, splashy cymbals and spindly guitars with a backwash of organ. The Velvets studio version, recorded in 1969, is much shorter than Sunray's cover, a mere five minutes- but what a way to spend five minutes.

Ocean 

Forty Five Minutes Of Jon Hopkins

Last Sunday's spoken word/ ambient mix featured two tracks with Jon Hopkins on board, one his own recording with the voice of Ram Dass and the other a track with David Holmes and Stephen Rea reading Seamus Heaney. Both could have been on today's Sunday mix, forty five minutes of Jon Hopkins, an artist who has the ability to switch between spaced out ambient, neo- classical piano and full on electronic rave. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Jon Hopkins

• Bats In The Attic
• Deep In The Glowing Heart
• Emerald Rush
• Luminous Spaces
• Everything Connected 
• Glitter (Jon Hopkins Remix)
• Love Flows Over Us In Prismatic Waves

Bats In The Attic is from Diamond Mine, an album Jon recorded with King Creosote in 2011. Kenny's fragile voice and guitar are matched by Jon's use of found sounds and musique concrete techniques. 

Deep In The Glowing Heart and Love Flows Over Us In Prismatic Waves are both from 2021's Music For Psychedelic Therapy, an album I've gone back to many times over the last eighteen months. 

Emerald Rush is a stuttering, distorted building piece of music from Singularity, his 2018 album that sounds as deep as the lush deep blue/ violet vinyl it was pressed on. Everything Connected is from the same album, an epic piece of entrancing, ebbing and flowing, intense 21st century dance music.

Luminous Spaces is a version of Luminous Beings, a track from Singularity but with Kelly Lee Owens on vocals, a track that achieves take off in spectacular fashion, music for stellar places. 

Glitter is by Daniel Avery, a remix of a song from Song For Alpha, the 2018 album that started his remarkable run of recent albums. Jon's remix takes Daniel's thumpy original and increases everything- the kick drum bangs and rattles and the drop and crashing re- entry two thirds of the way through are heart- stoppingly exciting, capable of making me feel vaguely anxious and laughing out loud at the same time. Goosebumps stuff. 

Saturday Live

Red Snapper have brewed up a smokey, funky, murky stew combining downtempo, acid jazz, trip hop, dub and Afro jazz, instrumentals and soundtrack sounds, a blend of live instruments and electronics, since 1993. This hour long film shows them playing at the Woodbridge Festival of Arts and Music in Suffolk a few years ago, long and deep grooves with instruments and sounds flying off all over the place. 

The group are about to release a live album and are touring the UK to support it. Live At The Moth Club comes out next Friday with the single The Sleepless out now ahead of it, recorded live back in May 2022 in Hackney. Joined by MC Det on vocals, The Sleepless is all loose drums, warped double bass, sax and liquid guitar lines.

The Sleepless originally came out in 1995 on their EP for Warp, the classic Reeled And Skinned. A month before this new live version of The Sleepless, Red Snapper released Suckerpunch, a set closer with clipped guitar and massive sounding Rich Thair drums, Ali Friend's bass causing all sorts of rhythmic madness as David Ayer's guitar solo spirals higher and higher, MC Det's voice echoing into the room. Live At The Moth Club can be ordered here. 

Sabresonic At Thirty

Big news announcement! Sit down, hold tight. Sabres Of Paradise, the early 90s dub techno trio of Andrew Weatherall, Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns, released their album Sabresonic thirty years ago (the exact release date is a matter of some debate but we're settling on 11th September 1993).

Over at The Flightpath Estate, the Andrew Weatherall Facebook group we set up nine years ago, the admin team (Martin, Dan, Mark, Baz and me) have had some discussions about things that have seemed ridiculous to us and have then actually started to take shape and happen. One of these is under wraps for the moment but the other is taking place three weeks today. Martin had the idea of holding a Sabresonic 30th birthday listening party at The Golden Lion in Todmorden and of inviting Jagz Kooner to do a Q&A session with him DJing after. We knocked it around a bit, a few calls were made and amazingly the Sabresonic 30th Anniversary party is happening at The Golden Lion on Friday 3rd  November. The event is free. Jagz is going to have a chat/ answer a few questions about Sabres of Paradise, the making of the album Sabresonic, working with Andrew, the Sabres remixes from the period and whatever else comes up, we'll listen to the music and open it up to the floor. The Q&A part of the evening is going to be hosted by someone new to the David Frost/ Graham Norton role (that would be me). Fingers crossed eh?

Back in 1994 Sabres remixed James and the results came out as a two track, half hour epic titled Jam J. On Andrew's residency at Kiss FM he played an early version/ remix of what became Jam J. This was never released but has been ripped from that Kiss FM broadcast, a Sabres remix of James' Honest Joe. It contains all sorts of signature Sabres sounds, the Weatherall/ Kooner/ Burns team working their magic with seven minutes of 1993 four- four dub techno, Mr Booth et al bent into all kind of new shapes (with a Kiss FM ident annoyingly appearing in the middle).  

Honest Joe (Unreleased Sabres Of Paradise Remix from Kiss FM Radio Mix)

November at The Golden Lion looks increasingly like the month of dreams. The night after the Sabresonic 30th party Red Snapper are playing. The following Friday David Holmes is DJing, a launchpad for his forthcoming album Blind On A Galloping Horse. On Sunday 19th November Manchester's Aficionado team of Jason Boardman and Moonboots host at 25th anniversary bash. That's just four of the highlights. David Holmes' recent single Necessary Genius was followed two weeks ago by a remix package, David and Raven Violet's song reworked by Skymas, Phil Keiran, Decius, Robin Wylie and Lovefingers. They've taken some time to worm their way into me but now all the different versions offer up something new and different. Lovefingers slows the song down, sticks a big, reverb heavy piano part into it and samples snippets of the people in David and Raven's list (a bit of Loaded, a brief snippet of Sinead, some Morricone). Decius do their Decius thing, chopping up a bit of vocal, raisng the tempo and making it very intense. Phil Kieran stretches the song out, bringing the synths to the fore and eventually hitting the button marked 'massive I Feel Love sequencer'. Find them all here. 

Walrus

Duncan Gray's latest track, available here for just £1, is a monster, an eight minute epic that slides in and then starts snarling, the bassline growling and showing its tusks. Walrus was recorded back in July and is out now. It sounds like it emerged from the sea to make its presence known, weighs half a ton and will return to the choppy waters as soon as it's finished with you. 

Duncan's label Tici Taci has been celebrating ten years in the business of releasing chuggy dancefloor based electronic/ dub/ slo mo/ cosmic tracks. By nature much of this kind of music is ephemeral, made for the dancefloor but not necessarily intended to last. It's remarkable how much of Volume 1 and Volume 2 has withstood ten years and still sounds fresh. The latest release, Volume 3, is tracks from more recent times, with many artists who have featured here in the last few years-  Welsh cosmiche/ indie dancers The Long Champs, Tirana's Balearic Uj Pa Gaz, Duncan and Ian Weatherall's own Sons Of Slough, the brilliantly named Boy Division, plus Field Of Dreams, Martin Eve and Jack Butters. You can buy Tici Taci Decade Volume 3 here. 

A couple of samples from Volume 3 to whet your whistle (but you could dip into any of the sixteen tracks and hit gold). This is Martin Eve's Night Train featuring the talents of Fluke's Jon Fugler. Martin is immune suppressed, has been seriously unwell and been isolating since Covid hit in 2020. His continued cheeriness in the face of this coupled with his righteous ire at the way some people have been left behind since the government deemed Covid to be over, is inspiring. For Martin and half a million people like him (and for us, who lost a son to Covid) it's not over. Night Train is a gorgeous slice of slinky chug- house to make the next seven minutes seem better.

Men Of Letters came out on The Long Champs album Straight To Audio, an album I raved about in 2020. Men Of Letters is a sunrise kind of moment, pattering drums and glistening guitar lines, everything heading upwards as the early morning mist burns off. 

Tomorrow Is A Long Time

It's funny how you can be in the midst of something and a song can stop you in your tracks- in this case not even the song I'm posting here but a flicker of acoustic guitar that sounded like it and straight away in my head it turned into this one. The second or two of folk guitar in the background on TV propelled me to my CDs, pull this out and play it. 

Tomorrow Is A Long Time

Bob Dylan recorded Tomorrow Is A Long Time sixty years ago on 12th April 1963 while playing a gig at New York Town Hall. Just the young Bob, an acoustic guitar and a microphone very close to his mouth, three verses, each finishing with these lines-

'Yes and only if my own true love was waitin'/ And if I could hear her heart a-softly poundin'/ Yes, only if she was lyin' by me/ Then I'd lie in my bed once again'. 

I put the disc into the tray and pressed play, sat back, listened and then played it again several times. A song about loneliness, love and waiting, sweetly sung, a few fingerpicked chords with a capo on the third fret, over half a century ago.  

Dylan chose not to release the song until 1971. He recorded a demo of it in December 1962 but went no further. Joan Baez played it live. Elvis did a cover in 1966 as did Odetta and Judy Collins, Dorris Henderson and The Kingston Trio. In 1970 and 1971 there was a dearth of new Dylan product, Bob having retreated from fame and generational spokesperson status. The head CBS records suggested a new Bob Dylan Greatest Hits double album, eventually titled More Greatest Hits. Dylan agreed and said he'd compile it himself with an entire side made up of unreleased archive recordings of which Tomorrow Is A Long Time was one. In September 1971 Bob went into a studio and re- recorded several songs that eventually came out on The Basement Sessions in 1974- I Shall Be Released, You Ain't Goin' Nowhere and Down In Then Flood. They closed side four of More Greatest Hits, along with When I Paint My Masterpiece (also unreleased and dating from March '71), sequenced following two previously released songs, If Not For You (from 1970) and It's All over Now Baby Blue (from 1965). The latter jumps out stylistically, upsetting the flow of side four a little, but the other songs are as good a run of songs as any Dylan put out in the 1970s with 1963's Tomorrow Is A Long Time sandwiched in and somehow fitting perfectly. 

Indigenous State Of Mind

One of last year's highlights was Boxheater Jackson's full length album We Are One, released on Mighty Force. Almost a year to the day later Boxheater has followed it with a second one. Indigenous State Of Mind is an eleven track, fully realised piece of work inspired by Vernon's travels and encounters. The album starts and finished with spoken word and chanting, Boxheater's spiritual world and search for connections and a simpler way of life setting the widescreen parameters of the album. Track two, The Divine Opening, flows in with tribal drumming, shakers and bone flutes along with long synth chords. The Speed Of Light Is Changing (New Earth Mix) continues the trip, a voice guiding the way forward as Boxheaters' acid house begins to work its way in, stripped down and minimal but rich and full sounding, thumping dance music for dark rooms. Gotta Find A Way! (Living My Truth Mix) is ten minutes of kick drum, percussion and synth squiggles, laser beam simplicity and dancefloor dynamics. 

This is Star Nation Connect (118 BPM Mix), track eight, a heady blend of proto- house and indigenous prayer, kick drum and ritual, the gradually increasing intensity of the synthlines counter balanced by the calmness of the voice. 

By the time track ten ten arrives, Mother Earth Connection (The Red Blooded Truth Vocal Mix), the sense of being swept along by the album is real. The voice on Mother Earth Connection asks the listener to travel back to a time when the people lived off the land, Boxheater's marriage of 21st century acid house and the wisdom of the First Nations becoming a full journey and as the album ends with another prayer, a circle too. Big Vern was one of the Rotters Golf Club crew, someone who benefitted from Andrew Weatherall's generosity and Andrew's phrase Gnostic Sonics fits this album perfectly. Buy it on CD or digitally at Bandcamp. 

Monday's Long Songs

Andy Bell's GLOK side project released a new album last week, eight versions of previously available songs played live in session for Electronic Sound. The album, Gateway Mechanics, is out at Bandcamp digitally and on bright yellow vinyl. He's on tour as GLOK at the moment. The versions on the live album are superb, the synths and guitars flying off over pre- recorded drums, Andy's cosmische/ motorik influences in full flow. This version of Dissident (from the first GLOK album of the same name, released in 2019) is twelve minutes of Michael Rother- esque guitars and pulsing sequencer lines, the fuzzbox seeing some action in the final few minutes. 

As a bonus, a  few weeks ago Andy and Masal put out a cover of Neu!'s Hallogallo, recorded at The Social in May this year, nine minutes of West German by way of Oxford bliss.

Forty Five Minutes of Speaking Voices

I had the misfortune recently to see an advert on TV with the voice of Alan Watts is being used to sell cruises for the Cunard shipping company. Watts was a writer, speaker and philosopher who did much in the 1950s and 60s to popularise Eastern philosophies in the west. His lectures and speeches have been widely available for a long time, not least since the rise of Youtube. His son tries to control the use of them through an Alan Watts website where they can be downloaded when paid for, so presumably Cunard paid for the use of Alan's voice rather than just ripping it from Youtube. The advert chops up Watts' speech and misses the end section entirely, not surprisingly, (knowingly) misrepresenting the message of the original, selling a luxury cruise on the high seas as the dream Watts speaks of. I'm not here to complain about advertising, it's a bit late in the day for that. Watts' voice and speeches are instantly recognisable and catnip for use in media where his message, accent and speaking voice and rhythms are striking and attention grabbing. 

I came across this clip this week too, writer Paul Bowles interviewed in 1970 about a trance dance and self mutilation he witnessed while resident in Morocco. Bowles left the USA in 1947 and settled in Tangier, recording local musicians and writing. His novel The Sheltering Sky came out in 1949, turned into an epic film by Bernardo Bertolucci in 1990 (I read the book and saw the film at the time and enjoyed both but don't remember much about either now so need to revisit). Bowles' speaking voice, like Alan Watts, very much lends itself to being set to music, not just the content but the tone and timbre and patterns of speech. Which led to think that speaking voices set to music would make a good longform mix.

The mix below is forty five minutes of speaking voices set to music, sometimes where voice and music have been specifically made for and recorded with each other and sometimes where the voice has been taken from earlier recordings and sampled. I could probably find enough to make a second at some point in the future. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Speaking Voices

• Jon Hopkins, Ram Dass and East Forest: Sit Around The Fire
• 10:40: The First Step
• Coyote: The Outsider
• David Holmes and Jon Hopkins ft. Stephen Rea: Elsewhere Anchises
• Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright: Be Love
• Steve Queralt and Michael Smith: Chaldean Oracle
• Steve Queralt and Michael Smith: Glitches (Flug 8 Remix)
• Fireflies and Joe Duggan: Leonard Cohen Knows

Sit Around The Fire is the closing track on Jon Hopkins 2022 Music For Psychedelic Therapy, the voice of guru and writer Ram Dass talking about spiritual discovery through sitting round the fire and staring at the flames, while Hopkins' slow piano chords and sound of wood burning and crackling drift by. 

The First Step came out on Higher Love Vol. 2 last year, a 10:40 track that borrows a Bertrand Russell interview and layers a slow burning groove and wash around it, growing in emotion with nods to Elvis and Spiritualized. Russell speaks of acting and of doing in spite of doubt and in the absence of religion.  Magical stuff. 

Coyote are masters of sampling voices and building beautiful Balearic songs around them. This one takes Alan Watts talking about artists, work, states of evolution and sane and insane societies, adds some lovely acoustic guitar, and pays tribute to Andrew Weatherall (who styled himself as The Outsider when writing for Boy's Own back in the late 80s). The Outsider is the last song on their 2021 album The Mystery Light, a highly recommended record. 

Elsewhere Anchises is from David Holmes' Late Night Tales, a stunning 2016 compilation album that pulled together nineteen songs of life and loss, spanning Buddy Holly and David Crosby to Eat Light Become Light and songs David made for the album. On Elsewhere Anchises actor Stephen Rea speaks the words of Seamus Heaney over David's ambient backdrop, the sound of something quite special taking place. 

Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright have released one of this year's best dub/ dub techno/ psychedelia albums, Psychedelic Science. Be Love opens the album with the voice of Ram Dass making his second appearance on this mix. 

Steve Queralt and Michael Smith released the four track EP Sun Moon Town last year, Ride bassist Steve writing and recording four very different pieces of music and Hartlepool born writer and flaneur Michael narrating his own tales of adventures and wanderings in the 21st century, a place and time that seems quite bewildering to him. The Flug 8 remix comes from this year's remix package, a dissection of late stage capitalism and advertising agency dreams you can dance to.  

Fireflies is one of Nina Walsh's musical outlets, a South London based collective. The voice is that of Joe Duggan, Derry born and resident of Crystal Palace. 'If anyone knows', Joe says, 'Leonard Cohen knows'. 

Saturday Live

Last Saturday's Saturday Live slot had Happy Mondays in seriously fine form on Tony Wilson's legendary Granada TV music programme The Other Side Of Midnight. Wilson had a certain amount of sway by the late 80s but his bosses were still pushing his music programmes to the late night slots, out of harm's way. The Other Side Of Midnight ran from June 1988 through to July 1989. The end of series party, broadcast on 23rd July 1989, was filmed at the Quay Street studios, Wilson introducing the show and the set transformed into a full blown 061 rave. Wilson tries to flog a OSM t- shirt and then we're into T- Coy, the Mancunian/ Latin house trio of Mike Pickering, Simon Topping (ex- ACR) and Ritchie Close, and their superb Carino. As was often the case at the time, the crowd are the stars as much as those on stage, the shots of the dancers bringing 1989 right back. 

T- Coy are followed by A Guy Called Gerald and and the British house record that beats all others, Voodoo Ray. Then we have the Mondays, Shaun slurring instructions in broadest Salfordian, 'turn it up, I said I like that, turn it up'. Later on they play Wrote For Luck, the corwd full of hair being grown out, whistles being blown and limbs waving. This all took place on an afternoon at the bottom end of Castlefield. 

Little Black Dress

Back at the start of the year 10:40 released an album, Transition Theory, an eleven track trip through the Balearic/ dub/ downtempo fields with each track containing the seeds of the next. It was in some ways 10:40's definitive statement, a bringing together of the sounds its creator Jesse had been pursuing and refining for the previous few years. This is the album's opening piece, Tumbling Down, where long synth chords and crackles of electricity provide the backdrop to a voice that's just out of earshot. Some slow hand drums start up and various melody lines weave in and out. The album is here if you don't have it or haven't heard it. 

Out today, a sidestep from Transition Theory, shimmying towards the flashing lights and smoke of the dancefloor, is the newest release from 10:40- Little Black Dress, a three version release on Powder Wax Vol. 1 which promises 'pop disco cosmic disco dub'. Little Black Dress (Original Fit), with vocals from S.A.A.R.A, is a collision of the pop and the disco with the cosmic and dub disco, a sleek, modern, mirrorball moment with wobbly synths, lasers, thumping kick drum and pulsing bass. 

It's joined by10:40's Heavy Eyeliner Dub and Undressed Dub. The Heavy Eyeliner Dub takes Little Black Dress from the main room to the 80s goth/ cool wave room, a smaller space and darker too with someone hammering the dry ice machine. There's more hairspray and leather jackets out on the floor, everyone glancing around as S.A.A.R.A sings, 'You send shivers down my spine' and the synths stutter.

The Undressed Dub rattles and shakes, S.A.A.R.A's voice chopped up and echoed. The second half builds in intensity, the punters in the cosmic disco backroom, a smiley friendly space, flipping out to the wiggly synths, tumbling drums and bumping bass. 

The Powder Wax Vol. 1 EP is available at Bandcamp, pay what you like.  

Push The Feeling On

I saw the video for this song recently, a song that was pretty inescapable in March 1995. It's not a song I was a massive fan of but I didn't dislike it either- you heard it so often you didn't need to buy it or go looking for it, it was everywhere. It pushed a few buttons sitting in front of the TV one night last week. Push The Feeling On was by Nightcrawlers, a Scottish group led by producer/ DJ/ singer John Reid. The song originally came out in 1992 in a disco/ Acid Jazz style but didn't cause too much of a fuss. When it was later remixed by MK (Marc Kinchen) in a house style it became a big hit, working its way from clubs to charts all over Europe and eventually got to number three in the UK charts at a time when that meant selling tens of thousands of records/ CDs/ tapes. The MK version was so successful that Nightcrawlers decided to make it the lead version and they switched to become a house act, actually deleting the original version from their back catalogue.

The song is a low key, subtle, deep house affair, a stripped back sound with hi hats, a bleepy organ part, an insistent, bouncing rhythm with two affecting vocal hooks. In a way though, although I instantly recalled the song and its effect on me thirty years later was instant, it wasn't the song as much as the video that struck me. The video, with singer John Reid lip-syncing his vocals straight into the camera while a variety of 20- 30 somethings bouncing around, is pure 1995. People in clubs in the north west of England in 1995 looked like this- short haired girls, long haired men, leather and satin, dyed hair, afros, chokers, hats, 70s shorts with knee socks, the two types of dresses being worn. Admittedly the cast in the video are a glamourous and attractive bunch but the look and the dancing is what the clientele of certain bars and clubs looked like, the crowd at Paradise in Manchester for instance or Nation in Liverpool. It struck me quite deeply that the mid 90s have a look just as noticeable as the mid 80s or mid 60s do. 

A reader at Youtube has left this comment- 'We don't search for old songs, we search for old memories. Nostalgia is a very powerful thing'. 

Wait On The Sons Of No One

The Replacements 1985 album Tim has been given the four disc box treatment, out recently and sold out almost everywhere. Tim came out in 1985, a year after Let It Be, their mid- 80s classic. Let It Be was full of classic Replacements songs, Paul Westerberg stretching out a little and the band on top of their ramshackle game. It took them to a major label, Sire, and then Tim. The title of Let It Be was a sly nod to The Beatles, but a middle finger too and a dare. The title of Tim came about after the band kept getting asked what the album was going to be called and they kept saying, 'Tim', and laughing. Eventually, that's what it was called. 

Tim has many very good songs but the mix was not ideal, the drums tinny, the bass indistinct, everything a little smaller than it should be. On songs like Bastards Of Young, Left Of The Dial and Kiss Me On The Bus it didn't matter, you just turned the volume up and sang along, the guitars cranked up high and Westerberg's outsider/ loser anthems hitting home like the first cigarette of the day (back in the days when I did such a thing). The new version of Tim contains this 1985 mix (remastered) but also has the entire album remixed by Ed Stasium, best known for his work with Talking Heads and The Ramones. It's fair to say that, after a few listens, the new mix of the album is going to become the definitive one. It's so much better, the songs sounding like they should have all along and as fresh as if they were recorded yesterday, while you were in the room with them. The muddiness and thinness is gone. The drums punch and sound real, the bass is up with the guitars, some of the guitar solos appear from the murk, the instruments sound closer together and louder, not in a radio station loudness wars way but in the way a band should sound. 

Bastards Of Young is one of Westerberg's best, a lyric for the alienated and dispossessed. The new mix makes it sparkle and jump, the Replacements' punk edge restored to the performance. 

Left Of The Dial, a song about where to find the best music stations on the radio/ a girl that's left him/ the loss of teenage years, is more dynamic than before, crunchy and alive with Westerberg singing like it's the last song he's ever going to sing. 

Little Mascara, is the most changed, the song not just remixed but rejigged, intro extended, verses and choruses shortened and tightened. In short the song it should have been in 1985.  

The other eight songs on Tim all benefit in a similar way. I know you can argue that the definitive version is the one that came out first (and the purist in me agrees up to a point) but in this case I think we have a situation where the Ed Stasium mix becomes the one to go to every time. The box comes with more discs including a third disc of outtakes, alternate mixes, demos recorded with Alex Chilton and alternate takes which I haven't had time to explore yet- however it's well known that the unused version of Can't Hardly Wait included here knocks the spots off the one that came out on Pleased To Meet Me. There's a live disc too, a record of the band at Cabaret Metro in Chicago, a twenty six song set from November 1986 with covers aplenty. The Replacements were a notoriously unreliable live band, drunk and self sabotaging and not long after this album the band began to disintegrate and by the late 80s was a Paul Westerberg solo outfit under the Replacements name. This new version of Tim offers a sliding doors moment, where The Replacements stay together, where the sound and the songs are what they should sound like. 

Test Card Girl

This is new from Stretford's Psychederek, a £1, four minute autumnal wonder. Test Card Girl starts out with a drumbeat and faint wash of synth and builds very gradually, with whispers, wobbles and echoes fading in slowly, then noises and waves swelling before it all falls away to leave just a lone trumpet part. Then the drum kicks back in and a female vocal part wanders on in top in a way which is uplifting and quite moving. The ending with trumpet, telephone bleeps and a sudden cut off is pretty magical too. Buy it at Bandcamp. 

Monday's Long Song

We went to the cinema on Saturday night to see the re- released print of Stop Making Sense, Talking Heads' 1984 concert film, directed by Jonathan Demme and showing the nine piece band on fire in Los Angeles at the end of the tour to promote the previous year's Speaking In Tongues. I first saw it in 1987, bought on VHS and played repeatedly. The re- release doesn't do anything the earlier one didn't but seeing it on the big screen and at volume was a total joy. The set up of the film is well known- David Byrne arrives on stage on his own with ghettoblaster and acoustic guitar and plays Psycho Killer. An 808 drum machine kicks in and David plays and sings along. During the instrumental section he staggers about the stage like a man being shot, his wired energy setting the tone for much of the rest. Over the next few songs the band join him one by one, first Tina Weymouth for Heaven, then Chris Frantz and then Jerry Harrison. After that Steve Scales bounds in on percussion, Edna Holt and Lynn Mabry take up their place at the front of the stage next to Byrne on co- vocals and dancing and then guitarist Alex Weir and Bernie Worrell on synths/ keyboards. Once the stage set is built and band are assembled its a full on Talking Heads show, with stunning versions of Slippery People, Making Flippy Floppy, Swamp, Tom Tom Club's  Genius Of Love (proving Chris and Tina could write hits too) and more. The version of Life During Wartime is absurdly good, the band running on the spot, Byrne circling the stage, running round the drum and keyboard risers three times and arriving back at the mic for his vocal. The sheer exuberance and joy the band exhibit, magnified by the big screen, is brilliant to watch, David Byrne's choreography and sense of theatre central to the show but not overpowering it- his dance with the lampstand during Naive Melody and the preacher persona performance on Once In A Lifetime are stunning. If you've seen Stop Making Sense you'll remember all of these parts- seeing it all again at the cinema was a blast. Everyone in screen two on Saturday night left with a smile on their face.

Before Stop Making Sense Talking Heads released a double live album, The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads, a two disc chronologically sequenced album drawn from various gigs between 1977 and 1980. In 1980 Talking Heads played Emerald City in New Jersey, the band expanded from the four piece version and heading towards the nine headed monster that would make Stop Making Sense. Houses In Motion is one of the key tracks from 1980 masterpiece Remain In Light, a weird slow motion funk groove and David Byrne's unique lyrical outlook- 'For a long time/ I was without style or grace/ Wearing shoes with no socks/ In cold weather...'. 

House In Motion (Live at Emerald City 1980)