The Duchess Of York was a small grass roots venue in Leeds that opened in 1985, held 250 people and hosted pre- fame gigs by Nirvana (October 1989) and Oasis (September 1993) as well as early gigs by Manic Street Preachers, PJ Harvey, Radiohead, Verve, Green Day, Pulp and Blur. One of those venues where there could be two people watching on a wet Wednesday night or a packed and sold out sweatbox. A stepping stone to bigger things. Back in the 80s and 90s these venues were in almost every town and bands would frequently play twenty or thirty gig tours, trouping round the country playing in the big cities but also in Northampton (Roadmenders), Buckley (Tivoli), Greenock (Town Hall), Widnes (Queen's Hall), Bath (Moles) and Burnley (Mechanics), not to mention the numerous polytechnic and university rooms and halls.
The Duchess is long gone but the Leeds Civic Trust put a blue plaque up in 2024 to mark the site (now a branch of Hugo Boss) and the work of the man who opened and ran it, John Keenan. Carl Airsine has recently released an EP on Leeds label Paisley Dark named The Duchess, a tribute to the venue and its underground spirit. Carl's track, The Duchess, is a celebration, noisy, chuggy, disco- punk with distorted guitars and bass, thumpy drums and voices appearing out of the mix. It pulses and throbs with that energy that live guitar bands in small spaces do.
There are three remixes. Ian Vale strips the track back, toughens the drums and darkens the mood. Belfast's Viper Patrol go acid- full on bassline squiggle and 303s with disembodied vocals and a post- midnight feel. The pick for me is by South London dub specialists Rude Audio, who take an alternative route to/ from The Duchess, finding a cosmic/ dub/ Balearic vibe with twinkling synths, dub space and drums and a letting in of the light. The Duchess is at Paisley Dark and can be found here.
Nirvana's gig at The Duchess on 25th October 1989 was bootlegged and widely distributed on the bootleg cassette market. My friend Ian Lawton (Meanie) photographed the band for Kerrang and interviewed them in a nearby McDonalds. The tour was to promote Bleach, pre- Dave Grohl with Chad Channing on drums. This is the gig with one of Meanie's photos to illustrate it. Highlights include Love Buzz, Polly, About A Girl and Blew but they do not particularly sound like a band who within two years would become the biggest band in the world.
We had a day out at Jodrell Bank yesterday, home of the Lovell telescope which has been sending radiowaves into space since 1957 playing a huge part in our understanding of space. The dish is enormous, once the largest in the world, still the third largest. It moves too so it can be pointed in any direction. We saw it move while we were there, rotating round the track it sits on, which was actually really exciting.
A new visitor centre has been built since we were last there and is full of brain frying information about the universe, galaxies, pulsars, black holes, quasars and dark matter. It's a humbling place to visit and spend a few hours at, the vastness of space and what's out there compared to the smallness of us and what's down here. There are several artistic responses too which neatly connect science and art, space and poetry. Frighteningly the UK Research and Innovation agency have decided to cut Jodrell Bank's funding from April 2028 and without this the facility- pioneering scientifically, grade 1 listed and a UNESCO world heritage site- may close down.
I had two major takeaways from the masses of information we read. The first was that when we see light coming from space, the stars for example, we're actually looking back in time- the light is coming from hundreds/ thousands/ millions of years ago and is only reaching us now so what we are seeing has already happened. Jodrell Bank identified the Crab Pulsar, a supernova explosion seen and recorded in China in the year 1054, recorded at the time as a 'guest star' that was bright enough to be seen for several days during daylight. The second was that when we tune between TV or radio channels about 1% of the noise we hear that the antennae pick up is actually 'the fading glow of the Big Bang'.
The phrase 'the fading glow of the Big Bang' stuck with me for some time. On the way back some of what I'd been reading about and seeing at Jodrell Bank made connections with music and songs and this hastily thrown together mix is a response to that. Musically it's all over the place in the first half but then settles into a dance music groove.
Jodrell Bank and the Lovell telescope have conducted research into galaxies and clusters, including gravitational lensing studies of galaxies (the bending of light from a distant source as it travels past a massive object such as a galaxy or galaxy cluster, apparently).
Beth Orton's Galaxy Of Emptiness is from her album Trailer Park in 1996, a track mixed and produced by Andrew Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood in their studio under the flight path at Hounslow. Sonically it's incredible, all space, detail, Weatherallian FX and Ali Friend's double bass ricocheting down the line. Lyrically, it's vast and tiny, cosmic existentialism. Loss.
A pulsar is a pulsating star, a highly magnetised rotating star that is emitting beams of radiation out of its magnetic poles. Galactic lighthouses.
Ride's Pulsar was the lead song on their Tomorrow's Shore EP, released in 2018. I'm not sure the post re- union Ride have recorded a more exciting song than Pulsar. It is in their own words, 'a space anthem' about light, existence and trying to get home.
The Andromeda Galaxy is the nearest major spiral galaxy to our own, the Milky Way, located about 2.5 million light years away and sometimes visible to the naked eye.
Timothy J. Fairplay's Free Andromeda album came out on Hoga Nord in 2022, a very fine nine track selection of synth electronics and drum machines. Worth revisiting if you haven't spun it for a while.
A quasar is an extremely bright and distant, active galactic nucleus, powered by a super massive black hole. I'm typing this but I'm not sure I fully understand it. But I like the idea that there are things that are much bigger than us that we can only stare at in wonder.
Mr Fingers came back with Cerebral Hemispheres in 2018, cosmic acid/ dance music. Qwazars was a stand out, a rotating synth pattern and chord change that is utterly hypnotic.
Cassiopeia is a constellation in the northern sky. It's five brightest stars form a W in the sky, visible to the naked eye. A section of the Milky way runs through it containing a number of young luminous galactic disc stars and nebulae.
Kolsch's Cassiopeia came out in 2014 with piano and strings by Gregor Schwellenbach. Minimal, emotive 2010s house music.
The Lovell Telescope appeared on the sleeve of Sub Sub's Space Face, a 1991 record that blew up in clubs at the time not least The Hacienda, thundering breakbeats and Balearic pianos with an aptly chosen sample, 'My god, it's full of stars' (taken from a 1984 film called 2010- The year We Make Contact). Sub Sub were local boys, from Wilmslow, just down the road from Jodrell Bank. As I'm sure you know, a few years later after a fire that destroyed their studio/ rehearsal space on Blossom Street in Ancoats they became Doves. In 2011 they played an acoustic gig at Jodrell Bank in front of the Lovell telescope. Here they are playing a Bagging Area favourite, Kingdom Of Rust.
A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion.
Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten.
I went down a memory based rabbit hole with Pye Corner Audio, Boards Of Canada, Vangelis and Blade Runner, Jan van den Broeke and Aphex Twin (and those tracks all fit together really well, a nice twenty five minute ambient/ synth set). Out in the Oblique Saturday community we found Ernie with a trio of forgetful tracks from Morgan Morse, Farmergeddon and Kenmore Classic, Beerfueled with Pixies covering Leonard Cohen, Al G with the Sultans Of Ping F.C. and their lost jumper, Mrs G with Doves, Khayem and The Mekons, Jake Sniper and The Caretaker and Rol with The Panic Brothers.
This one's for Jake and his Mum.
This week's Oblique Strategy card reads thus- Spectrum Analysis.
After leaving Spacemen 3 Sonic Boom released his first solo album Spectrum and then several albums and singles as Spectrum (including the sublime Highs, Lows And Heavenly Blows).
In 1992 Spectrum/ Sonic released an EP with a cover of Daniel Johnson's True Love Will Find You In The End. It's a blissed out cover, Sonic singing dreamily with a choir of angels backing him, over twinkles, drones and pedal steel. 'Don't give up now/ True love will find you in the end', Sonic croons, sounding like he might just mean it and might just make it through the night.
Anyone who's read Spacemen 3 bassist Will Carruthers' memoir Playing The Bass With Three Left Hands will recall the chapter describing a memorable evening the band played at a health club in Chester, the occasion when they were introduced to ecstasy (to add to the cocktail of somewhat stronger and more addictive drugs Sonic and Jason were well into by that point). The 1997 compilation CD What Came Before After finishes with this track, a nine minute exploration/ distillation of the Spectrum sound- synth drones, repeating and oscillating into eternity.
This is from Spectrum's Indian Giver album with Captain Memphis from 2008. It's the same song that Sonic recorded for Recurring, 1991's final Spacemen 3 album, written by Mudhoney. Sludgy, stoned space rock.
Aphex Twin returns making consecutive Oblique Saturday appearances. In 2016 he put out a 12" single called Cheetah, which paid tribute to an obsolete British electronics company of the same name who made unfathomably difficult to work out synths. The first track on the EP was this one...
Aphex Twin in coasting mode is still some considerable distance ahead of his peers. Slow motion, slippery and phased to jiggery.
Finally, one of my favourite albums of last year was by Sewell And The Gong, pastoral sounding Balearica, instrumental folk gone cosmische. As Rob at Ban Ban Ton Ton put it, 'jubilant, trance- inducing, celebratory.... like a drug free, jolly Spacemen 3'. Which ties things together nicely.
Cal Gibson's Secret Soul Society has been drip feeding us with new tracks all summer, a series of dubby weird disco tunes blurring the boundaries of new music, edits and versions. The tracks below are all highly recommended, hazy and dubbed out soul/ dance music, old and new fused. I'll leave it for you to work out where the source material comes from.
First, in mid- July- Situation Station, a low slung, machine funk song with a soulful vocal.
A couple of weeks after that, bubbling, summer sounding funk soul/ cosmic disco About2Believe, the singer telling us, 'You're about to believe/ In love again'.
Then, in late July there was Emotional Dub, dub and disco spliced together, a slinky floor filler with choppy guitar, bubbling bass and killer vocal.
A couple of days later in early August there was Lemonade All Day, trippy cosmic/ Balearic with chanting and FX
A week on from that came Mountain Of Tears, a bass driven soul number, urgent and impassioned night time music, drums pushing and synth FX splashing around.
In mid- August, Dub Sultanas, headband wearing guitar wranglers filtered into something darker and groovier.
Last week, Dubbing In The City, slowed down groove, taut bass and fractured vocals with an oddness that gives it an edge- very tasty.
All of these (and more) can be found at The Secret Soul Society Bandcamp page here. They work very well individually but probably best sequenced one after the other, a forty minute late summer dub/ disco/ soul compilation or mixtape.
Back on 20th March 2010 when this blog was less than three months old I wrote this post...
My 6 year old daughter has seen me doing this and asked what I'm doing. When I explained about the blog she said she wanted a go, so here it is, a guest post by E.T.....
'I like this song because i like dolly parton .I like the rhythm and i like the music i also like the way she sings.'
Eliza shouted up the stairs to me on Tuesday night that Dolly Parton had died, and followed it with, 'Dolly Parton, my queen...'
Dolly Parton has been everywhere in the two days since she died and rightly so. Not only did she write some songs that are universal, she was a hugely compassionate and right minded person- her work donating trying to get kids to stay in school, her Imagination Library, paying for scholarships, supporting and paying for research into pediatric diseases and Covid vaccines, for AIDS charities and Black neighbourhoods in Nashville are all examples of what you'd hope the rich would be doing with their money- doing some good. As many people have said in the last two days, she's the best of America. The contrast with some of its public figures could not be greater.
I don't listen to her songs that often but this one always, always sounds good...
Jolene was written in May 1973 about a red headed bank clerk who'd sometimes flirt with her husband Carl. The name came from an encounter with a fan who had red hair, pale skin and green eyes who came backstage for an autograph. These are the sort of details I love, that get under the skin of where a song comes from.
In 2013 there was a phase where people discovered the joy of slowing down 45 rpm singles to 33 and posting them on the internet. Jolene sounds magnificent at 33 rpm, a heartbroken cowboy who's lost his love to another woman.
In 1993 One Dove released their own version of Jolene, a trippy comedown dub/ ambient house gone country version, Dot Allison's voice giving Dolly a Glasgow make over. I could listen to this on repeat for ages. It came out as a B-side to their Why Don't You Take Me single, the record company looking for a hit. The 12" came with two more tracks, the ice cold reggae of Skanga and an Underworld remix of the title track. Four stunners on one piece of vinyl.
In 2004 The White Stripes covered Jolene too, a raw and electrifying version of the song, Jack and Meg at the edge of their senses under Blackpool lights.
Mano Negra were a French band founded and fronted by singer Manu Chao. Manu took his roots- Galician- Basque parents, Cuban heritage, upbringing on the outskirts of Paris (the family had fled Spain when Franco issued a death sentence to Manu's grandfather)- and fused them with all the excitement of punk, folk, ska, rockabilly, reggae, salsa, rai, hip hop and everything else he'd heard coming out of the speakers in a multi- cultural Paris suburb. They would switch between singing in Spanish, French, Arabic and English, sometimes within the same song, and found success in Europe and South America, supported Iggy Pop on a US tour, but they were never more than a cult concern in the UK.
In 1989 they made Puta's Fever, eighteen slices of high energy, fully committed, world fusion/ rock 'n' roll. Voodoo is from that album and starts off like some drunken French uncles singing at a wedding. Then a whistle blows, the drums thump in and the song kicks in, bass pumping away and Manu singing, 'Last night I saw you diggin' in my cemetery baby/ Now you better watch out/ Cause you can't get back from Voodoo!'. Tyres screech and layers of varnish are scrubbed from the acoustic guitars.
Mano Negra formed in 1987 and split in 1994. When touring Puta's Fever they'd often abandon the stage and troop outside to play the encore in the streets. After the split Manu Chao went solo making several albums and touring with his Radio Bemba Sound System. His self described patchwork style of music and solid left wing politics and activism place him as one of the true inheritors of punk and The Clash, someone who walks the walk as well as talking the talk. I thought I had one of his albums, 2001's Proxima Estacion: Esperanza but it's not on the shelf under either M or C so your guess is as good as mine.
It doesn't really require any words of explanation from me, the song and the footage speak for themselves and the life affirming nature of the dancers, captured from various pieces of footage from the 20th century and more recently, brings a smile to the face- until the last few seconds which has the capacity to shock you out of your complacency.
Two weeks ago David played a live two hour set for Never Never, a Belfast clothes shop. The set is a blast, a sublime blurring of the boundaries between psyche, jazz, blistering hip hop, soul, funk and repetitive wonky acid house. You can listen at Mixcloud. David has got lots of irons in the fire at the moment- The Five Techniques project and his production on the imminent Dexys album have both been 2026 projects along with his various DJ gigs, and a few weeks ago he spent an afternoon in his home studio with Eric Cantona who turned up unexpectedly...
Birds Of Pandæmonium have been gearing up to an album release, out on Sprechen next month. Their epic uber Balearic cover of New Musik's On Islands came out in July complete with three Hardway Bros remixes and prior to that there was Days Go By, remixed by Richard Norris.
The last single before the release of the album came out last week- Could Heaven Ever Be Like This, ten minutes of dreamy, sun kissed psychedelia, slo mo chug with cosmic house pianos and multi- tracked vocals that come down like soft, warm rain.
The EP comes with remixes including two courtesy of Hifi Sean, the man who was once a Soup Dragon and is now a DJ/ producer/ songwriter (you might remember his albums with singer David McAlmont particularly 2022's Happy Ending). Sean vocoders the vocal and goes four- four with the drums, turning up the whammy and whacking the bass to the fore. There is a Birds Of Pandæmonium remix, a Hifi Sean dub, an instrumental and deeply addictive, goth dance Dub Poem version which has really stuck around in these parts over the weekend.
Get the Could Heaven Ever Be Like This EP at Sprechen's Bandcamp page.
Could Heaven Ever Be Like This was originally a lush jazz- funk/ disco jam by Idris Muhammed and was played at David Mancuso's Loft. A celebration of love and romance and a longing for transcendence- you can see why it struck a chord in mid- 70s New York.
The Birds Of Pandæmonium album comes out in mid- September and is called Eudæmonia, a Greek word which translates as living well by doing what is right and fulfilling one's potential. It is a central concept of Aristotle's philosophy, where a eudæmonic life is one of 'virtuous activity in accordance with reason'. Something to chew over on a Monday in late August.
Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros came together in the late 90s. Joe started working with Richard Norris and Pablo Cook and the Mescaleros formed around that trio. In his memoir Strange Things Are Happening Richard Norris recounts how Joe and a cavalcade of cars turned up at Real World Studio in Wiltshire. Richard was sitting on a grass bank as the convoy arrived and Joe leapt from a vehicle brandishing a drum machine and shouting, 'does anyone know how to make this thing work?'. Richard raised a hand and said he did. Joe, Richard and Pablo wrote Yalla Yalla, with Anthony Genn coming on board to mix. They went on to write Techno D- Day, Tony Adams and the beautiful From Willesden To Cricklewood. Richard Norris Joe wrote Sandpaper Blues, Diggin' The New and the late career rock/ reggae/ acid house classic Yalla Yalla. All those songs became part of the first Mescaleros album, Rock Art And The X Ray Style.
The Mescaleros grew from there with Scott Shields joining (bass and guitar), Martin Slattery (keys and guitar), Richard Flack (various instruments) and Steve 'Smiley' Bernard (drums). Genn hung around for a while but eventually left. In 1999 Joe and the Mescaleros recorded Rock Art And The X Ray Style having played a load of gigs including Glastonbury (where Joe smashed a BBC camera during the broadcast with a mic stand). In Strange Things Are Happening Richard tells the story of his departure from being Joe's creative partner whilst out in LA- the circles around Joe and the former members of The Clash come across like the worst aspects of Succession, in crowds and out crowds and hangers on all jostling for elbow room and access to the top table. At an audience with event I went to Richard was asked how it ended with Joe and he replied, 'badly'. A rueful silence and some regret.
In 2000 Joe hooked up again with Tymon Dogg, a former 101er and Clash guest. Tymon joined the Mescaleros for Global A Go- Go and the band toured the UK, US and Europe, playing festivals and small gigs, combining Clash songs and Mescaleros songs in fine style, gigs awash with beer flying, and reggae, rock, dub and global sounds, joyous celebrations of Joe's music and life. I saw them twice at Manchester Academy in the 1999- 2002 period and on another occasion at Nynex Arena where they supported The Who in a largely empty arena. They were superb, a life affirming blast of energy and punk rock righteousness. Joe never gave less than everything, the band gave their all too to match him and there was no reason to think it shouldn't carry on for some time. Joe died suddenly at home on 22nd December 2002.
There are three Mescaleros albums- 1999's Rock Art And The X Ray Style, 2001's Global A Go- Go and the posthumously completed Streetcore from 2003. Between them they show a reborn and revitalised Joe Strummer, writing and recording and having the time of his life, making music that stands as not just the best of his solo career but alongside his songs in The Clash too. In the last year of Joe's life he'd been writing with Mick Jones again, songs that Mick assumed were for an upcoming Mescaleros album. Joe apparently thought they were for a new Clash album.
Yalla Yalla was released as a single in 1999 ahead of the Rock Art And The X- Ray Style album, Joe and Richard Norris summoning the spirits and the radio. Joe described the song as 'an ancient British folk song written in the year 1999'. Live at Manchester Academy they segued Yalla Yalla into Bankrobber, Joe disappearing offstage and returning with a child on his shoulders, arms in the air and red lights strafing the stage. Yalla Yalla is total Strummer- world with dubbed out references to Kool Moe Dee, The Treacherous Three, Brownie McGee, Ladbroke Grove, Ragga FM, Tae Kwon Do and the kebab shop. The Norro King Dub was on the 12", a Richard Norris dub of the original. According to Richard no one had ever called him Norro before and from that point only Joe did.
Fantastic came out in 2022, a posthumous release tied into a box set re- release of the three Mescaleros albums and fourth disc of outtakes and demos. It was recorded at Rockfield in Monmouth in December 2002, the month Joe died. Fantastic is an early version of Ramshackle Day Parade from Streetcore. Streetcore was completed after Joe died by various Mescaleros. Joe's vocals are guide vocals, not finished ones- this alone shows how much Joe put in to recording. The guide vocals for Fantastic, Arms Aloft and Coma Girl (among other Streetcore songs) are more impassioned than many singers manage ever. While we'll never know what Streetcore could have been and what other songs Joe might have written for it, the seven songs that the band finished for the album all stand up next to the rest of the Mescaleros back catalogue.
There are three other songs on Streetcore- Redemption Song, Silver And Gold and Long Shadow- that date from different sessions. Redemption Song and Long Shadow were done with Rick Rubin, intended for Johnny Cash to record, and were included on Streetcore at Lucinda's request (Joe's widow). The video for Fantastic is a lovely thing, footage of Joe from The Clash, solo and his family life spliced together.
At The Border, Guy is from Global A Go- Go, a seven minute freewheeling dub tune with scratchy guitar, organ and Joe singing about town planners, the Dow Jones and Leek town hall. Wonderful stuff, the genre hopping spirit of Sandinista! continuing long into Joe's solo career.
Burnin' Streets is from Streetcore and has a nice lyrically throwback to 1977 and London's Burning. Arms Aloft is a rocker from the same album. In the song Joe sees his (younger) bandmates on tour complaining about being tired and out of gas partway through a tour. Joe, ever the livewire and motivator, shouts at them, reminding them of their duty to rock 'n' roll, the audience and playing the gig, and how only a few nights before they were 'arms aloft in Aberdeen'. It's one of several songs on Streetcore that have a hint, a foreshadowing, of Joe's mortality. 'They say the stars can't see their rays/ Nor can they count the number of days', he sings near the end. At the start there's some cosmic Joe too with the line, 'Sometimes there's no stars shining/ Scouting the edge of the universe/ Sometimes you can't see a horizon/ Between the ocean and the earth'.
X Ray Style is a beauty, the title track from 1999's Rock Art And The X Ray Style (the cover was painted by Damian Hirst, a version of Neolithic cave art. Joe spent every summer from the mid 80s onward in Granada, Spain and in the nearby Nerja area there is a cave complex discovered by five school boys in 1959 containing the world's oldest known cave art- maybe this was the inspiraiton for the sleeve). The song X Ray Style is an acoustic guitar tune with a bongo groove, Joe singing about the stars and the hopes of a soul, Be Bop guns, rockabilly trains and how 'there's some people living who ain't got no heart and they never had none'. He finishes with the line, 'I want to live and I want to dance a while'. His voice ever sounded better.
Ocean Of Dreams came out on the 2022 box set, an unreleased Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros song dating from the Rock Art And the X Ray Style sessions with ex- Ex Pistol Steve Jones on guitar. It's got a lazy, laid back feel, Joe improvising and following his nose. In 1999 Anthony Genn had told him, 'You're Joe Strummer, you should be making an album!'. Other people had told him this at points in the decade between 1989 and 1999 but in 1999 the time was right.
Johnny Appleseed is the lead song from 2001's Global A Go- Go, a solo peak and a song that demonstrates everything that was great about the man. Acoustic guitars, massed backing vocals, old friend Tymon on violin and Joe singing about Martin Luther King and Buick 49s, and how if you want to get the honey you don't go killing all the bees, a line that could be about the environment or it could be about capitalism. Whenever I need to hear some solo Joe, I often start with Johnny Appleseed. The video is very Joe too, Joe and the Mescaleros wandering the streets of London as the public come and go...
Sandpaper Blues is a Richard Norris co- write. Joe's love of what used to be called World Music is all over the Mescaleros songs. On Sandpaper Blues there's Caribbean vibes married to Country and Western and Mariachi.
Coma Girl is the lead song from Streetcore, rousing Strummer three chord, Clash style, electrifying guitar rock. In the song Joe describes his walk through the outer areas at the Glastonbury festival, wandering round the stages as the rain comes in and the oil drums clang, while singing to his daughter Lola, the coma girl, who didn't want to get out of bed. Coma Girl is as good a final song as Joe could have wished for in many ways, a song that summons the vision of him on stage, his left leg twitching away as he bashed out the chords and sang at the microphone stand.
A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion.
Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was Water.
I ran with Sordid Sound System and Raymond Chandler, Dreems, Kalima, A Certain Ratio, Andrew Weatherall and Michael Smith and William Orbit, Beth Orton and Underworld. There was a big response from the Bagging Area community with Sundappledliz going for Alex Kassian and Jessica Lauren, Al G with Juan Wauters, Ernie Goggins and The Incredible String Band, Jake with The Avalanches, Ricky Otter and Richard Norris, Walter and The Woodentops, SRC with Bruce Lee and Underworld and also Fela Kuti, Rol and The Cascades, and Jase who had several suggestions- Ride, Blackwater and Elvis.
Jase's Ride suggestion was their debut album Nowhere which had that huge wave sweeping across the front cover, a visual representation of the band's shoegaze/ FX pedal wall of sound. The album's title track was missing from the album and eventually turned up on the Fall EP in October 1990.
This week's Oblique Strategy card says this- The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten.
Which is oblique indeed. And then some.
It made me think of memories, memory and the act of remembering. Which is always a deep rabbit hole. Not long after Isaac died in 2021- and by not long I mean weeks- I was in bed doom scrolling and a link to a newspaper article flashed up. The headline (from I think The Guardian) read something like, 'Scientists discover whether our lives really do flash before our eyes before we die'.
I didn't click through. At that point, I couldn't see any way that that article was going to be a comfort or a help. I've never been back and looked for it either although it has crossed my mind more than once since. I can still clearly recall that exact moment, the instant, I saw the headline, read it, thought about it and rejected it. I didn't really want to consider what would have flashed through Isaac's mind in the moments before he died, with the three of us in the hospital room with him. It's a strange memory that has stuck with me ever since, unforgotten.
Buried Memories is from Pye Corner Audio's 2019 album Hollow Earth, a radiophonic/ dark synth track that suggests all kinds of things. The Hauntology/ Ghost Box scene and much of Pye Corner Audio's output is partly about memory and the way past haunts the future. Boards Of Canada's albums, this year's Inferno included, deal in this too. One of the tracks on Inferno is this one...
As we get older it seems that more and more that what we are as human beings is a bunch of memories and experiences, encased in our bodies. Memory is a tricky thing. It's unreliable and inevitably one sided. It enables us to learn from the past. Sometimes it makes us cringe- things we said or did that we really wish we hadn't. One of the things about dementia that scares us the most is seeing loved ones lose their memory. What is a person without memories?
In Blade Runner the new generation of replicants (Nexus 7s) have been given memories. Rachael, played by Sean Young, has been implanted with the memories of Tyrell's niece and as a result she believed she was human. On discovering this, her entire world is turned upside down. Her relationship with the past, her past, is fake, a construct, someone else's past. In the film,this Vangelis song plays as Rachael visits Deckard's apartment for the first time. Tellingly, it finishes with sirens and the whirring and bleeps of a computer programme.
Jan van den Broeke's 2017 album 11000 Dreams is a deep dive into memory, found sounds, ambient and samples. This track is literally memories turned into sound, a woman's voice caught on tape with an ambient backing, '...things that happened years and years ago... incidents... memories...'
I don't know what Eno and Schmidt intended the most important thing to be or if they even had an intention. The most important thing for us as people could be many things- to be loved, to be remembered, to be live well without doing harm to others, to stand up for the things you believe in, to contribute to society in some way, to leave the world better than you found it. Big stuff.
While we were in Spain two weeks ago we drove to Granada and spent several hours at the Alhambra Palace, the 13th and 14th century fortress and palace that overlooks the city. Towards the late afternoon we sat in the shadow of the palace enjoying a very strong and very good Cafe con leche and I said to Lou, 'Placeta Joe Strummer is just down the hill...'
So we wandered down the hill in the heat and found the triangular piece of public land, bordered by roads on two sides and some steps and a derelict and grafittied building on the other.
Once there was a large painting of Joe but at some point it got painted over.
Why has Joe Strummer got a public square named after him in Granada you might ask?
In the mid- 80s when The Clash split up Joe beat a retreat to lick his wounds and cry into his beer and he went to Granada. In the early days of The Clash Joe was going out with Slits drummer Palmolive and she and her brother Fernando Romero were from the city. Joe and Romero had previously shared a squat, and used to talk politics, Spain, the civil war and everything else and these struck a deep chord with Joe. With Joe in a mess after the break up of The Clash, Fernando took Joe to Granada. He put roots down in Granada and the villages around it, produced an album by local punk band 091, went searching for the (still un- found) grave of poet Federico Garcia Lorca (murdered by a Francoist death squad in 1936 and buried in a mass grave somewhere in the hills above the city) and drank in local bars. Joe included both Lorca and Granada in the 1979 Clash song Spanish Bombs.
It became Joe's routine in the 80s and 90s to spend a long summer in Granada and then return to London for the Notting Hill Carnival. Esperanza Romero, sister of Fernando and Paloma, married Richard Dudanski (101ers drummer, one time Clash drummer and drummer for PiL, The Raincoats and Basement 5). They still live in Granada. Joe bought a house in Almeria and also lost a Dodge car somewhere in the city- he parked it in an underground car park but couldn't remember where. There's a film about it.
After Joe's death Fernando and others petitioned the council to name a square after Joe, who they saw as an adopted son of the city. Dudanski, Joe's friends and the local socialists pestered the council repeatedly and eventually in 2013 Placeta Joe Strummer was named. There was a party to mark it with an open air acoustic gig with members of The Pogues, The 101ers, Mescaleros and 091 all playing and Joe's daughters Jazz and Lola attended.
It's as good a spot as any for a photo opportunity for any Joe Strummer and Clash fans who happen to be in Granada on their summer holidays.
Today is Joe's birthday. He would have been 74. It's fairly easy to imagine a 74 year old Joe, still making music, still open to the endless possibilities of the world and its cultures, still enthusing about Cuban be- bop, African highlife, reggae and three chord rock 'n' roll, raging against the world's injustices and iniquities.
In 1979 The Clash played at one of the series of Concerts For Kampuchea, four concerts organised by Paul McCartney and, um, Kurt Waldheim*. There had been promises that The Beatles were going to reform for the concert- this obviously did not happen. The four concerts were held in late December '79 and The Clash headlined the second, with Ian Dury and The Blockheads and Matumbi also appearing. This clip of the group playing Armagideon Times is as good a live performance as you're going to see today by anyone, The Clash absolutely at the top of their game and Joe magnetic at the centre of the stage...
Ten years later Joe was solo and in the midst of what some people have called his Wilderness Years. Richard Norris, who worked with Joe in '98/ '99 and co- wrote several Mescaleros songs counters this description of the post- Clash, pre- Mescaleros years, arguing that Joe made a solo album, wrote and recorded a handful of film soundtracks, acted in several films and co- wrote and produced Big Audio Dynamite's second album- not really a wilderness period at all.
In 1989 Joe released Earthquake Weather, a fourteen song album with the musicians who became Joe's Latino Rockabilly War. It's a messy album, probably a handful of songs too long, with muddy production and a confused mix and I often feel guitarist Zander Schloss needed reining in at times. The final song, Sleepwalk, is a beauty though, a great Joe Strummer solo song. Rueful and ruminative with a Caribbean feel and Joe coming back to the line, 'What good would it be if you could change every heartache that ran through your life and mine?'
In 1999 Joe returned with The Mescaleros and made two fine albums- Art Rock And The X- Ray Style and Global A Go- Go- and then a posthumously completed one from 2003, Streetcore. More from these Mescaleros years coming up on Sunday.
Happy birthday Joe. Feliz cumpleaños.
* Kurt Waldheim was an Austrian politician who became secretary general of the United Nations between 1972 and 1981. In 1986 it was revealed he had knowledge of Nazi atrocities as a member of the Wehrmacht during World War II, and that this had been covered up. This caused an international controversy but didn't prevent him from becoming president of Austria between 1986 and 1992. During this period he was officially declared persona non grata by the American government (and most western ones) and banned from entering the USA. Today of course, they'd send a limousine anyway...
The recent Disco Pogo Tribute To Andrew Weatherall book has a section on many of Andrew's remix and production work, along with interviews with the artists involved from the earliest days (Hallelujah and Loaded) to Andrew's last released remix (GLOK's Cloud Cover). In between, much else is covered including a part on the production and mixing Andrew and Keith Tenniswood did for Beth Orton, that resulted in three songs that came out on Beth's album Trailer Park. Beth talks glowingly of the time spent in the Two Lone Swordsmen studio and the work the three of them created together. Beth had already recorded the basis of the three songs- Galaxy Of Emptiness, Tangent and Touch Me With Your Love- with some top musicians including the wonderful double bass of Red Snapper's Ali Friend. Andrew and Keith took the three songs and set about remixing them in the studio with Beth recording new vocals on the spot. They way Beth describes it, it all sounds very organic and natural, easy and creative.
My go to from Trailer Park is usually Galaxy Of Emptiness, ten minutes of spaced out, cosmic existential splendour. But I went back to the other two and Touch Me With Your Love particularly sounded superb- it was almost like listening to it anew.
Ali's double bass, woody and vibrating, sits at the centre. Around it Andrew and Keith weave a rich and detailed sonic tapestry, whirrs and clicks, FX, acres of s-p-a-c-e and Beth's distinctive voice, everything sprinkled the Weatherall magic dust. Trailer Park, as much as any other record from 1996, invented folktronica- a clumsy label but a fitting one and one that she seems happy to accept. Beth says that at the time she wished that Andrew and Keith could have done the entire album but it wasn't to be and she's OK with that- those three Weatherall/ Tenniswood produced songs on Trailer Park are more than enough.
Jon Hassell was an American trumpet player and composer who made and contributed to a huge range of twentieth century music, playing with Holger Czukay and Irwin Schmidt, Terry Riley, Talking Heads (on Remain In Light), Brian Eno, Ry Cooder, David Sylvian, Bjork, Juan Atkins and many others. He died in 2021. The Ndeya label has been set up in partnership with Warp Records as a home to Hassell's music and they have released two posthumous albums- Listening To Pictures and Seeing Through Sound- as well as a re- issue of his 1977 debut Vernal Equinox. In October Ndaya are going to release Music Is Invisible, a live recording from May 2015 when Jon played at St John's church in Hackney as a trio, with Rick Cox and John von Seggern. This excerpt of Blue Ba- Ya came out last week.
Blue Ba- Ya (Excerpt) is a gorgeous way to spend four and a half minutes, at an intersection of jazz, global, ambient and experimental, what Hassell called Fourth World music. There are synths, drones, a two chord piano part and Hassell playing trumpet. Three people on stage, two laptops and various synths, FX devices and a load of cables and wires and a trumpet making such human sounding music. AI could never do this. It doesn't know how.
In 2023 a compilation of late 80s recordings was re- released, an album called Psychogeography that originally came out in 1990. This track was the album's opener, a descent into the city with drones, whirrs and found sounds.
I go back to work today, two weeks earlier than I've been used to now I'm working in a 6th form college. Returning to work in mid- August feels a bit odd- the rhythm of my year usually sees me return in early September, but change is good, change is what I moved jobs for so I'm just going to have to get used to it. It'll soon be the bank holiday weekend and then September and then the weeks when the leaves start to turn from green to orange, gold, yellow and then brown. It's already darker earlier, noticeably so this week.
Blue Lines is a fantastic album, one of those which crossed borders, knocked doors down and united different tribes. The flow of the album, from Safe From Harm to Hymn Of The Big Wheel via those chilled rap songs, the glorious majesty of Unfinished Sympathy and lush, organic proto- trip hop is perfect. Every beat, every note, every word, weighed and exactly correct. When side two plays out with Hymn Of The Big Wheel it feels like you've done the full trip, gone all the way round. It creates a stew from Bristol, late 80s/ early 90s club culture, rap and reggae, dub, breakbeats, sampling, graffiti, rare groove, weed, 90 bpm tempos, found sounds, Horace Andy, Nellee Hooper, Neneh Cherry, sound system and DJ culture and American hip hop styles into one hypnotic and seductive package.
Hymn Of The Big Wheel is a Neneh Cherry co- write and she sings the female harmony (uncredited on the sleeve). Daddy G has said that Neneh gave the members of Massive Attack a kick up the arse and a place to record (her baby's bedroom), booting them out of their natural laziness. Good job she did eh?
This compilation came out back in May but I missed it and have been catching up recently- Occupied Minds Vol. 1, an eighteen track multi- artist album from Belfast released in solidarity with the people of Palestine and raising funds for Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP). Many of the artists are new to me and the range of music is huge, from ambient to folk to techno and covering a range of emotional responses. This one, We Are! We Want!, is by The Light Brigade, who you might know as an alias David Holmes uses.
We Are! We Want! rides in subtly but gathers pace with rattling drums and metallic percussion and the wobble of synth bass. There are pauses and stabs of synth, the ever present rumble of the bass and some early 90s tension.
Over the top of this is the voice of James Baldwin, speaking about humanity and love, about the actions of individuals and what people choose to do and who they choose to be.
'What you’ve got to remember is what you’re looking at is also you. Everyone you’re looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be'
Baldwin was talking about life in the USA in 1970 and the daily racism he and other black Americans faced. He was honest but optimistic- grace and humanity would save the world from despair he believed.
In some ways We Are! We Want! reminds of some of David's earliest work, tracks like Johnny Favourite and Four Boy One Girl Action and their sole release, the 1993 single The Hawaiian Death Stomp. Eleven minutes of early 90s progressive house/ techno spliced and an equally long, slowed down thumping, stompy dub. Moody, tribal and Sabres- esque.
The four boys were Holmes, Jagz Kooner, Gary Burns and Kris Needs. The girl was Patti Smith, sampled, fucking with the future.
Also on Occupied Minds is Timmy Stewart, Belfast producer, DJ and promoter who along with Aaron Black records as Black Bones. Timmy's track on Occupied Minds is The Right To Life, a rattly, spacey slice of 2026 dub techno.
In April Black Bones released a self titled album pulling together tracks they'd released on 7'', 10'' and 12''. It's here and highly recommended. In May they put out an EP/ 12'' single called Black Bones 008, four pieces of dark dance floor Balearica/ electronic edit mayhem that sound great in the mid- August sun. Listen/ buy here.
This 350 page hardback book came out recently, the work of the team at Disco Pogo (the people who used to be Jockey Slut, the 90s/ 00s Manchester based magazine that chronicled dance music and beyond). The book is a comprehensive look at the life and music of Andrew Weatherall. Back in 2020 Disco Pogo published a previous version of the book but this one is expanded with tons of new material (over 200 pages of new material) and interviews with insight and behind the scenes detail from those who knew and worked with Andrew- there is a lengthy section on his remixes with contributions from Hugo Nicolson, Jagz Kooner, Keith Tenniswood and Tim Fairplay, there is Justin Robertson writing about Andrew and his visual art, plus contributions from David Holmes, Daniel Avery and Bobby Gillespie among others, a chapter on the gear and instruments in the various studios Andrew occupied, and in depth accounts of the making of the Sabres Of Paradise albums, the Two Lone Swordsmen days, The Aspodells' Ruled By Passion Destroyed By Lust, the story of Convenanza, lots of photographs and posters, an oral history of the acid house years, a full discography and much more. It's beautifully designed and printed and looks incredible.
There is also a chapter on The Flightpath Estate, the edited transcript of an interview the five of us did a few months ago about our albums and the Weatherdrive and a Flightpath Estate guide to five Weatherall online mixes. I thought we might get half a page- turns out we got eight, with the sleeves of our pair of Sounds From The Flightpath Estate albums and a photo of us at The Golden Lion with Waka.
Mind blown.
Disco Pogo's Tribute To Andrew Weatherall is available here and also at many other places that sell books. At some point soon I hope to be able to share some news about a third volume of Sounds From The Flightpath Estate. We always thought we should aim for a trilogy and things are happening behind the scenes.
In the meantime, to accompany all of this here's a fifty minute mix of music Andrew made under his own name. He didn't release any music under his own name (other than remixes of other people's work) until 2006 when his manager suggested that putting out an EP of new music he'd recorded under his own name might help sell more copies. That EP, out twenty years ago, was The Bullet Catcher's Apprentice. He followed that with a solo album in 2009 (A Pox On The Pioneers) and then in the 2010s several albums and EPs using his own name. There's also a second solo album, I Laugh Myself To Sleep, that is unreleased (for various reasons) and which is something of a lost gem in the Weatherall back catalogue. Maybe one day...
Vorfreude 2 is from Andrew's album Qualia, out on Sweden's Hoga Nord label in 2017, eight instrumentals that combine steam powered drum machines, throbbing live bass, synths and keys, a very Weatherallian fusion of post- punk, dub and cosmische.
Privately Electrified is from A Pox On The Pioneers, the 2009 solo album that fused proper verse- and - chorus songs and singing, guitars (Chris Rotter in fine form), the doomed, lost causes of Victorian and Edwardian adventurers, and dub influenced indie/ post- punk. On Privately Electrified the synths, drums, guitars and vocals are all perfectly weighed and produced with Andrew's multi- tracked vocals and some glorious backing vox building and swelling to the ending where he sings and signs off with, 'Three bottles and a hundred tears show/ Just how drunk I am'.
The Moton 5.2 was one of four tracks on an EP for Pamela Records in February 2020. Chugging, slippery dark dub disco with hissing drums, synth squiggles and some dramtic keyboard chords. The Moton 5.2 is a version of the EPs lead track, The Moton, which I think was a pun on Pamela and Moton/ Tamla Motown. The track March Violets, also on the EP, was named after Philip Kerr's Weimar and Nazi era noir detective novels.
The Confidence Man was on 2016's Convenanza album, a nine track double vinyl work that drew on much of the music he'd made over the previous decades, from Screamadelica onwards, to create a definitive statement of some kind about where he was and what he was doing. There is dub and piano, electronics and guitars, songs that nod to what he was reading and also some big picture stuff (We Count The Stars, Kicking A River). The Confidence Man is a blast, there's some Clash in it, the Sandinista!/ Combat Rock era of the band, some post- punk too. 'From deep within, the chants begin', Andrew intones.
Convenanza was paired with a remix album, Consolamentum, with songs from the first remixed by a cast of friends and musical partners- Scott Fraser, Red Axes, Unloved, Justin Robertson, Solar Bears, Heretic, Timothy J. Fairplay, Sons Of Slough, Duncan Gray, Vox Low and Black Devil Disco Club all show up on the vinyl. The Emperor Machine remixed The Confidence Man in dub style on the digital release.
Unknown Plunderer was one of two tracks on a 12" whose release sadly coincided with Andrew's death in February 2020, another Weatherall and Nina Walsh excursion into leftfield dub. On the flipside was End Times Sound. Andy Bell of Ride and GLOK contributes guitar. Andy arranged to buy a guitar from Andrew and when he arrived at the studio played it for a while. Before he left, Andrew and Nina asked him to play along to some tracks they'd been working on- Andy's guitars also appeared on Unknown Plunderer/ End Times Sound and the 2018 Blue Bullet EP which includes the track Making Friends With The Invader (the Invader in the title is the guitar Andy bought from Andrew, a 1960s guitar with a built in speaker). All four tracks on those two EPs plus the two released on the Kiyadub EP in 2017 are cut from similar cloth and together make a very good half hour Andrew Weatherall mixtape/ album.
Feathers was the lead track on the 2006 EP The Bullet Catcher's Apprentice, a chunky, percussive instrumental with scratchy, clanging guitars and lead bass. The Bullet Catcher's Apprentice was the first thing Andrew did after Two Lone Swordsmen came to an end and represent Andrew dipping his toe back into the world. I think there was a bit of a sense of 'what next?' at the time, Andrew a little unsure of himself and where he fitted into the musical world of the mid- 00s (uncharacteristically maybe) and was a very welcome release. It also has the lost gem Edie Eleven, an 00s dance floor thumper with some great Balearic acoustic guitar, and the very funny and self-explanatory You Can't Do Disco Without A Strat. The Disco Pogo book and the music above show just what a singular and much missed talent he was.
A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion.
Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was Be less critical more often.
This took me to San Pedro's Minutemen and their 1984 album Double Nickels On The Dime. The Oblique Saturdays collective weighed in various critical/ non- critical suggestions- Bob Dylan's Don't Think Twice, It's Alright (Trail Of Bread), Lyle Lovett and A House (Ernie Goggins), Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis and the incredible self- taught shambling proto- punk/ indie of The Shaggs (Rongniss), Dodgy (John Medd), George Bean and The Runner Beans (Rol- deftly avoiding Alexander O'Neal), Boo Radleys (Al G), Whitney Houston (anonymous), and Mojo Nixon (Chris ZenArcade).
This weeks Oblique Strategy card reads simply this- Water.
For musicians in the studio I can picture numerous responses to this as they change their playing, use samples and found sounds. My response was much more literal songs with Water in the title. Ironically, given the multiple heatwaves we've had this summer, the falling water levels in reservoirs, drought warnings and scorched grass, there is no shortage of water at Bagging Area. This a selection of water songs, mainly lesser heard and less well known ones...
First up, Sordid Sound System, Los Angeles via Glasgow's Optimo and a 2022 EP Neon Noir- very persuasive electronic music, chunky and percussive with watery synths. The text accompanying the EP quotes Raymond Chandler-
'I drove on almost to Malibu and then parked and went and sat on a big rock that was inside somebody's wire fence. It was about half-tide and coming in. The air smelled of kelp and glowed like neon noir. I watched the water for a while and then I pulled a string of Bohemian glass imitation pearls out of my pocket and cut the knot at one end and slipped the pearls off one by one.
When I had them all loose in my left hand I held them like that for a while and thought. There wasn't really anything to think about. I was sure.
"To the Gods below," I said aloud. I flipped her pearls out into the water one by one. I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars."
Two from Factory. Kalima emerged from Swamp Children, becoming Kalima in 1983 and making several records, latin and jazz based excursions. Black Water is moody, slinky and cool and then the vocal comes in and lifts it up a level (from their 1986 album Night Time Shadows)...
The members of A Certain Ratio were deeply involved with Kalima. In 1981 ACR put out Water Line, a 12" that is the early ACR sound honed to perfection- taut but rubbery bass, skittery drums, otherworldly production, the sense of something being not quite right...
Andrew Weatherall and Michael Smith's Unreal City has been here fairly recently, a 2013 ambient/ soundtrack/ spoken word project, that found Andrew and Nina Walsh providing soundscapes for Michael to read passages from his book over.
On Water Music Michael finds his way into London from the Kent coast into the city and down some steps to the side of the Thames. Michael sees 'light on the water, lights from the Millenium dome... lights from the sugar factory at Silvertown...'...
Lastly, back to the recently departed William Orbit and his 1993 evergreen Water From A Vine Leaf. Water From A Vine Leaf was remixed by Underworld not once but three times, in total well over twenty minutes of 1993 trance house techno.
Part 1 is the go to- chopped up synth squiggles, synthetic horns, chunky drums, widescreen cinematic progressive house that deals in hypnosis and delivers euphoria.
Part 2 is a twelve minute trip into the Orbit/ Orton/ Underworld dreamworld, a spaced out, relatively stripped back bubbling psychedelic adventure- Beth's vocals are FXed and looped, the pace is slow, there are tropical birds, a very loose guitar line and layers of synths. Chilled restraint is the order of the day on Part 2.
I got home from our holiday in southern Spain to find my copy of the new Durutti Column album Renascent waiting for me- I'd streamed it a couple of times while away and had been both impressed and moved by it and that has been repeated with several plays of the vinyl version. The last Durutti Column album before Renascent was A Paean To Wilson back in 2010, a tribute to Tony Wilson, Vini's friend, sometime manager and label boss. More than that, Tony was a believer in Vini, a true advocate for the music of The Durutti Column. A Paean To Wilson was the 26th Durutti Column album and due to a series of strokes Vini suffered in 2010 and the long period since then where it was reported that Vini was unable to play guitar (certainly to a standard he was happy with) it looked like that was it, there would be no more Durutti Column. The news a couple of months ago of a new Durutti Column album and two songs that preceded it- Liars and Scammer- was therefore very well received. The fact that there would be a new Durutti Column at all was close to miraculous- that it should be so good...
While I was on holiday we dropped into the English language bookshop in Nerja where at the front of the shop by the till I found a Paul Preston book about the Spanish Civil War, a book called Comrades! that tells the story of the war through the stories of nine different people, from the fascist leader Franco to Dolores Ibarruri, the communist orator known as La Pasionaria (Paul Preston is the leading authority on the war and his general reader, The Spanish Civil War, is as good an introduction to and history of the war as you'll find). Comrades! includes a quote by Buenaventura Durruti, the anarchist- syndicalist leader of the anarchist militia the Durruti Column and the man whose name (mispelt) gave Tony Wilson the name for Vini's band. I've seen the quote before but as I flicked through the book, with Renascent playing, it jumped out at me...
'It is we who built these palaces and cities, here in Spain...and everywhere. We, the workers. We can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history.We carry a new world here, in our hearts'
James Nice, the man who project managed Renascent and who wrote A Life Of Reilly, a biography of Vini published in 2024, begins his book with the quote as well- 'we carry a new world in here, in our hearts'. Very Factory. Very Wilson. The Hacienda does not exist. The Hacienda must be built.
These things coming together as they did- the new album, Vini back in the press, the book (found and bought in Spain), the Durruti quote... it all seemed, well, very well timed. Wilson might have called it praxis* or something similar.
Renascent has a certain continuity with the Factory days. It has a Fac number, Fac 2.51 (as awarded by Wilson's son Oliver, steward of Factory Too) and the artwork is by 8vo who did much of the Durutti Column artwork back in the 80s. The music is a team effort, not just Vini but also Bruce Mitchell, Kier Stewart and Caoilfhionn Rose (a singer and pianist who has sung with Vini before).
The album is a thing of beauty, poignant and romantic, cut through with melancholy but also a success in the face of adversity. It was recorded sporadically, assembled over several years, from various sessions, gathering pace since 2021. At one point during Covid, producer/ Durutti Column member Kier Stewart and Vini's friend, manager and long term drummer Bruce Mitchell recorded it while sitting in a car, recording Vini through the window, due to lockdown restrictions.
Between them, they've created a ten song album that stands alongside previous Durutti albums. It drifts in slowly and gently with Echoes In The Memory, fragments of guitar chords and strumming shimmering in the light, over a wash of synths. The interplay of instruments sounds like memories flashing back and forth, a life flashing before our eyes, before it snaps into focus and finishes on one strummed chord.
Your Shadow In The Morning has Spanish sounding guitar notes, a familiar DC sound, some lovely echo and chorus FX, those melancholy notes Vini's been locating since the late 70s. Repeated listens bring them together as a song and a mood. Time Present And Time Past (and don't the song titles suggest so much) is a lilting guitar- led piece, notes and runs down the neck of the instrument countered by a twinkling acoustic topline, some bursts of electric guitar and a musical box melody dancing its way onward. Agonistes brings the first sign of vocals, some wordless backing vox by CaoilfhionnRose adorning Vini's guitar and Bruce's drums. Side one finishes with Liars, the first time Vini's voice is heard, 'I love you, I'm sorry', he repeats as sighs, drums, bass and guitars pad away.
Side two opens with Vapour In A Matchbox, a two minute instrumental piece, before one of the standouts, Your Shadow At Evening- Bruce on the front foot with the drums, some tension and groove, a line of feedback, swirling guitars and synths, some frustration and anger expressed alongside the melancholy and tenderness found elsewhere.
Sargasso Sea is sung and played by Caoilfhionn Rose. At point she sings, 'and I don't regret a single cigarette', a line that jumps out, almost a Reilly mission statement. It's followed by Scammer, Vini on vocals again over a typically Durutti Column melody, guitars and synths combining, piano notes and guitar notes trading places.
On the vinyl edition, the final song is For Friends Everywhere, a new orchestral arrangement of For Belgian Friends, one of Vini's most loved songs, originally released way back on the Factory Quartet EP. Woodwind, piano and strings, an arthouse cinema score version with a side order of Penguin Cafe Orchestra. The digital version of renascent includes an extra song (also available on flexi disc with some of the vinyl editions), All They See Is Fire, Vini's guitar with vocals from Lucas Elliot, another song that captures that Durutti Column feel, the longing and mystery that have been at the core of the Durutti Column for a long, long time now. It's a looking back for sure, a capturing of Vini's playing and his songs but it's looking forward too- or at least very happy to be in the present.
Who knows if they're will be any more new Durutti Column music. Maybe there will, maybe there won't- Renascent in itself is enough and as Buenventura Durruti said back in 1936, 'we carry a new world here, in our hearts'.
* Wilson was somewhat obsessed with praxis- the idea that you do things and then work out what they mean and why you did it afterwards. Sometimes the act of blogging seems to be very much an exercise in praxis.
