Forty Five Minutes Of David Holmes Remixes

Summer has finally gatecrashed its way into northern England and we’ve had the sudden appearance of the aurora borealis all over the country (I missed this on Friday night, having gone to bed. I woke up on Saturday morning to everyone else’s photos of the northern lights on display in the skies all over the nation). It’s been too nice to spend too long sitting indoors in front of a computer screen so this mix was a little thrown together in a rush but it’s turned out quite well- a selection of remixes of other artists by David Holmes from the last few years.

Forty Five Minutes Of David Holmes Remixes

• Andy Bell: The Sky Without You (David Holmes Radical Mycology Remix)
• The Vendetta Suite: Purple Haze, Yellow Sunrise (David Holmes Remix)
• Jo Sims: Bass- The Final Frontier (David Holmes Remix)
• Orbital: Belfast (David Holmes Remix)
• Lisa Moorish: Sylvia (David Holmes Remix)
• X- Press 2 ft. Kele Okereke: Phasing You Out (David Holmes Remix)

The Sky Without You was the opener on Andy Bell’s solo album Flicker, released in 2022, a blur of backwards guitars and reversed vocals inspired by the backwards songs The Stone Roses recorded in 1989- Don’t Stop, Guernica, Full Fathom Five, Simone (in fact, there’s the germ of an idea for another mix…). David’s remix came out on 10″ vinyl and digital in October 2022, a remix inspired by microdosing during lockdown in Belfast. The I Am A Strange Loop EP also came with remixes by Richard Norris, bdrmm, A Place To Bury Strangers and Claude Cooper- even among that company Holmes’ remix stands out.

The Vendetta Suite is Gary Irwin, a stalwart of the Belfast club and music world. The album The Kempe Stone Portal came out in 2021, with some remixes following a year later including David’s remix of Purple Haze, Yellow Sunrise which is a psychedelic/ acid house monster, a huge sounding record that fills any space it’s played in, a genuinely transportative piece of music.

Jo Sims’ Bass- The Final Frontier came out on Pamela Records last year, Holmes’ remix one of ’23’s highlights. Space house. 

David’s remix of Belfast was done for Orbital’s 30soemthing album, a celebration of three decades of Orbital. The original was recorded after the Hartnoll brothers played at David’s club in Belfast in May 1990. The even more recent version with Mike Garry, Tonight In Belfast, is one of 2024’s highlights. 

Lisa Moorish’s Sylvia came out in spring 2024, a song recorded as a tribute to writer Sylvia Plath. In April we stayed in Heptonstall while attending the AW61 celebrations in Todmorden. Sylvia is buried in the graveyard at Heptonstall, that’s her grave in the picture above (with Ted Hughes’ name scrubbed off by Sylvia’s fans). Her grave has hundreds of pens sticking out of the soil, left by visitors. Holmes’ remix is crunchy acid house, and was played at AW61 by Mark and then not long after by me (duh!).

X- Press 2’s Phasing You Out is from their 2023 album Thee, a return to form by Rocky and Diesel, with former Bloc Party singer Kele Okereke on guest vocals. Holmes’ remix is a full on, city scape sounding record, ending in a sea of sirens and traffic after several minutes of busy, high tempo drums. Makes it quite difficult to sequence/ mix but it had to go on this mix as I really like it. 

V.A. Saturday

My photo shows the beach at Wallasey on the Wirral rather than the one that the Cafe Del Mar overlooks on Ibiza but a beach is a beach yeah? This week’s various artists compilation is the sequel to last Saturday’s Cafe Del Mar Volumen Uno, Volumen Dos. Sequels can be hard, difficult second album syndrome is very much a thing, following as perfectly pitched and sequenced a Balearic compilation as Cafe Del Mar Volumen Uno can’t have been easy- but on the whole Jose Padilla largely achieves it although the classic feel of the first one overshadows the second a bit- there’s no Penguin Cafe Orchestra, no exclusive Underworld trance/ techno banger, no dub monster from Leftfield. A Man Called Adam and Sabres Of Paradise are both given second bites of the cherry with Easter Song and Haunted Dancehall and Jose himself is back with Sabor De Verano. 

Salt Tank were a duo from the UK, ambient/ trance DJs and producers making records throughout the 90s. Sargasso Sea is the kind of weightless, trippy, expansive early 90s ambient house that that period was made for, with seagulls, ripples of synth, echoing drumbeats and warm, padding bass. The Sargasso Sea is in the Atlantic and famously has no land boundaries and plenty of calm blue water 

Sargasso Sea

Entre Dos Aguas is by Paco De Lucia, a legendary Spanish guitarist and composer, a flamenco virtuoso. The song dates from 1973, and is considered a masterpiece of the form. 

Entre Dos Aguas

Cafe Del Mar finishes with Haunted Dancehall, from Sabres Of Paradise’s album of the same name. Before that we get The Metaluna Mutant and their track Blinky Blue Eyed Sunrise, an experimental ambient/ downtempo outing from 1995, from an EP called Midi- Knight At The Oasis. It’s a six minute excursion into abstract dance music and is very nice indeed. 

Blinky Blue Eyed Sunrise

Steve Albini RIP

Steve Albini’s death at the age of 61 from a heart attack while in his studio has caused shockwaves and an outpouring of tributes. Albini could be a polarising personality and in recent years he admitted saying and doing things in the past he regretted and apologised for them. Naming his early 90s band Rapeman was a clearly provocative/ idiotic decision and cost him a lot. His previous band, Big Black, were a huge part of the US post- punk/ hardcore scene, an abrasive and aggressive guitar band, clanky, metallic guitars and a drum machine. They courted controversy with their songs and lyrics but were by 1988 a big part of whatever constituted alternative culture- their name and sleeves were in the record racks, fly posted on walls, on gig listings and in the music press. Atomizer is a huge and dark record. Songs About Fucking was everywhere briefly. 

My friend Ian (Meany) was and is a huge fan of US hardcore and was part of the scene in Liverpool in the mid- 80s, promoting gigs, photographing bands and interviewing them. He posted this on his social media yesterday by way of an obituary for Steve Albini and he says more and says it better than I can…

‘I was just about to buy a ticket for Shellac in Brighton and get stuck into the interview in the latest Wire mag, hot off the press, and the bad news arrived. Fuck…. Proper legend obvs. No doubt the obits will focus on his engineering/production credits (his ‘cutlery scraping together’ production vibe, as I once heard it described (did round out as he went on) wasn’t always great – PJ Harvey wisely moved on I thought. In Utero (wasn’t that a bit shit?) but his guitar playing genius and his unique guitar sound are oft overlooked. Big Black were one of the pivotal bands of the post hardcore US underground halcyon days of my yoof and I forever regretted not seeing them on the Songs About Fucking tour before they split, tho I had the chance. ‘Kerosene’ would reverberate through indie discos (including Planet X, Liverpool) for years to come. The brilliance of his next outfit, a supergroup of sorts, Rapeman, got lost in the furore surrounding their admittedly very stupid name. Us members of the north west punk rock contingent have fond memories of their legendary Chester gig with (peak) Dinosaur Jr. The threepiece genius continued with Shellac, who I saw on several occasions, including at the Shellac curated ATP at Camber Sands (Cheap Trick, Wire, Low, Bonnie Prince Billy, Breeders, Rachels, Smog, Low, Mission of Burma, Melt Banana … need I go on). Famously cantankerous and opinionated, he was in fact, if you were on the right side of rock’n’roll history, quite affable in person. I had the good fortune to photograph him on a few occasions and hang out with him a couple of times: sitting on the floor in John Loder’s office (Crass, Big Black, Jesus and Marychain etc engineer) at Southern Studios chatting about the Scala cinema and films I remember, and I interviewed him at the legendary Newport TJs before a Shellac gig when he advocated for the greatness of ZZ Top (that’s all I can remember of that encounter!). Although he was fiercely indie, and railed against the the exploitation of the music industry, he also accepted the inevitability that streaming would deliver free listening, suck the profit out of recorded music but also would greatly increase listenership and push bands towards live performance. An antidote to the ideology of the privileged whiny whinging wealthy middle aged vinyl collecting cognoscenti. Gone too soon. Rest in power mate.’

Thank you Ian/ Meany

If you’ve never heard Big Black’s cover of The Model by Kraftwerk (off 1987’s Songs About Fucking), you should rectify that immediately by heading here. We were back at Meany’s once after clubbing (at Cream in the mid 90s, no doubt a foray to see Mr Weatherall DJ) and Ian slipped The Model into the post club soundtrack and it blew us away all over again. 

Steve Albino’s production was legendary. Albini scoffed at it being called production- he said it was all about how many and which microphones you had and where you placed them. He called it recording rather than production, the no bullshit attitude on display. In the early 90s he made The Wedding Present move into a different musical landscape…

Dalliance

May Ninth

I posted this song back in February but it seemed so obvious to repost it today- today is 9th May and this is May Ninth from Khruangbin’s latest album A La Sala. 

A very languid early summer groove, lighter than air vocals, the drums tap tapping away, the bass prodding gently while the guitar drops warm sunshine all over the song. 

The album came out a month ago. My pressing isn’t brilliant, a little bit crackly and it doesn’t seem loud enough to me but its an album that’s growing each time I play it. The feel of the twelve songs is very much lounge, with a backdrop of psychedelia, some dub and the rhythms of early 70s soul and funk bands like The Meters, lush and widescreen. Many of the songs on A La Sala sound like they could play over the end credits of a film, as all the plotlines are resolved and everything’s fixed. There are some found sounds in places, some ambient atmospherics and the album ends with a locked groove, a field recording circling endlessly. First song Fifteen Fifty Three opens with some crickets chirruping and the hum of the outside world, then the guitar and bass ease their way in and we’re off into the Khruangbin world, eleven more tacks gliding by, no hurry or haste to get anywhere quickly and nothing outstaying its welcome either. 

This one, Pon Pon, is equal parts clipped, scratchy funk, whispered vocals and supper club. 

Pon Pon

A La Sala finishes with Les Petit Gris, a piano playing a couple of notes, lots of echo and a guitar line picking a way through the song, before it dissolves into the sound of cicadas. 

Asylums In Jerusalem

While filing a few records away at the weekend I pulled out some discs from the S section and happened upon Scritti Politti’s Songs To Remember, a record I haven’t played for a long time. I put it on and spent three quarters of an hour in the company of Green Gartside in 1982. It is a very good album, a record with a long and complex back story that definitely adds to the experience of listening to it. It can of course also be listened to purely as a piece of early 80s pop music, something I’m sure Green was keen for it to be taken as when it was released- but on the other hand, you can’t abandon the scratchy, squat post- punk DIY sound of Skank Bloc Bologna for the new wave/ soul pop of Songs To Remember, and name your songs things like Jacques Derrida, Asylums In Jerusalem, Lions After Slumber and include the arch quotation marks around ‘The Sweetest Girl’ without expecting the listener to pick up on these things. This was pop music and yet more than pop music too. 

The album was recorded in late 1980 and into 1981 but delayed at the band’s request until September 1982 so that they could release some singles, build up interest and sell more copies. Green wasn’t interested any longer in the post- punk/ indie ghetto. He wanted success and was eventually unhappy with Rough Trade’s promotion of the album. For Green, who spent nine months convalescing at his parents’ house in Wales after collapsing on stage with what was at first thought to be a heart attack but later confirmed as a panic attack brought on by massive stage fright, going pop wasn’t a rejection of punk or selling, it was making pop not pap. Green lost interest in selling a few hundred records to the indie scene, he wanted to make pop music that found ‘a way into people’s hearts the way independent music never did’. He had spent months listening to funk, disco and soul, Stax and early 60s beat music. He also moved away from the constraints of the Marxist philosophy that inspired Scritti’s earliest recordings, rejecting what he called ‘monolithical Marxism’. His group he admitted were viewed as a cult band and as intellectuals and he was keen to move away from those margins. 

Asylums In Jerusalem

Songs To Remember arrives with the spring loaded bassline of Asylums In Jerusalem, a sound that bounces out of the speakers, along with Green’s honeyed vocal, clear and bright, and some female, soul backing vocals in harmony. The lyrics sound like classic radio pop fayre but were inspired by Nietzshe’s writings about the huge number of madhouses built in Jerusalem to contain the religious lunatics who sprung up in the wake of the arrival of Jesus, desert dwelling, locust eating prophets ‘talking in tongues again/ let him shake a little/ let him rock a little’. The B-side, Jacques Derrida, references the poststructuralist philosopher of the song’s title and how Green found himself torn between glamour and left wing politics, between glamour and being reactionary, and the politics of desire. 

Songs To Remember is lush and bright, sugar and honey, radio friendly but with the influences of funk and soul and digital dancehall, Prince and the nascent rap scene, vocoders and Lover’s Rock running through it, along with all this thought and politics and philosophy. The rest of Scritti Politti, drummer Tony Morley and bassist Nial Jinks both left the group in the aftermath of the recording/ release of the album, leaving Green to pursue things on his own, a road that led to the pop perfection of Cupid & Psyche 85, The Word Girl, Wood Beez and Absolute. I’ve posted Absolute before, a song that sounds like everything great about shiny 80s pop condensed into a four minute single sung by a man with Princess Diana’s hair and wearing a Nike Windjammer jacket, a jacket that in ’85 was favoured by breakdancers and casuals. ‘Absolute, a principle/ To make your heart invincible’, Green sings as the music explodes and swoons around him. 

Absolute

Green And Pleasant Land

The Top Of The Pops repeats on BBC4 have reached January 1996. The two episodes that were shown last Friday night contained the usual mixture of good, bad and awful- the number one single in the 4th and 11th of January editions was Michael Jackson’s Earth Song, surely one of the worst records ever made. The merely bad came in the form of The Outhere Brothers, Boyzone and a Shaggy song where he included this rhyming couplet- ‘I treat you like a Queen, you treat me like  peasant/ Why do you have to treat me so unpleasant?’. Babylon Zoo were also present.

The good were represented by Everything But The Girl and Missing, and three singles from mid- 90s bands that all struck chords with me in different ways while watching. From the 4th January episode, welcoming in the new year, there was Dubstar and their single Not So Manic Now. 

I always liked what I heard by Dubstar but I never bought anything by them. This song was from their debut album Disgraceful, a cover of a song by an obscure mid- 90s band from Wakefield, Brick Supply. The vocal by singer Sarah, her north east accent and flat delivery, the synth strings and indie guitars, all slightly distracting from the song’s lyrics that detail an attack on a pensioner (written by a mental health nurse who presumably with some experience of this). Leaving the topic of the song aside (and I didn’t know this was what the was about until I started writing this post) the idea of not being so manic now was one that stuck with me. 

A week later (or about ten minutes later on Friday night with some judicious use of the Fast Forward button) we had an episode presented by Lisa I’Anson, much preferable to Nicky Campbell who presented Top Of The Pops the previous week. The show paddled through some filler- Judy Cheeks, Tori Amos and Baby D before we arrived at Gene and For The Dead. 

Again, like Dubstar, I liked what I heard by Gene but own nothing by them. I don’t think I was looking for a new Smiths in 1996 but the song cut through on Friday night, the guitars chiming and swirling and singer Martin Rossiter looking every inch the mid- 90s indie rock star, a growl in his voice on the chorus and a good turn of phrase here and there- the song’s title stayed with me for a while, as Dubstar’s did. 

I do have this song by Gene, also a single and from their debut album from 1995, and I’m hearing this in a new light now too.

Olympian

The third band that lit up January 1996’s first two Top of the Pops was Dreadzone and their single Little Britain. Dreadzone formed from the ashes of Big Audio Dynamite, drummer Greg Dread hooking up with Tim Bran and then recruiting former BAD mates Leo Williams and Dan Donovan. Little Britain became one of the crossover hits of 1996- I think one of the TV channels used it for their football coverage during Euro 96, a bit of a cultural dissonance as the St. George’s flag flew everywhere and a supposedly new friendly, modern English nationalism was born. 

With lines like, ‘Say no matter what your colour/ Your race or your culture/ This is our inheritance/ To lead you on a merry dance’ and ‘This is our land/ This is your land’, Dreadzone were surely promoting immigration and a multi- cultural society, the waltz time strings of the song crossed with reggae, raga and the black British experience, and the power of music and dance to bring people together. 

Little Britain

As well as a couple of things that struck me personally, between them these three songs seemed to offer up something about the times- a sweetly sung song about trauma, an ode to the departed, and a celebration of black Britain and dancing. The then government, led by John Major, staggered on from one crisis and scandal to another for another year and a half after January 1996, until Labour landslide of May 1997 swept the Tories out of power for the next thirteen years, the TV coverage showing one Tory MP after another, standing in leisure centres and halls across the country as the results were read out by the returning officers, wiped out at the ballot boxes by voters who had finally become sick of them. Last week’s election results- the local council elections, the Blackpool by- election and the mayoral elections- all seem like steps in the right direction for 2024. 

Monday’s Long Song

Pye Corner Audio added another track to his hefty back catalogue of analogue dystopic acid last week with a Bandcamp release titled Walk In The Forest. Seven and a half minutes of burbling, radiophonic machine music, with an intermittent rattly drum machine that sounds like drawing pins being shaken in a biscuit tin and eventually uncharacteristically euphoric, rising synth chords. There’s a lovely long fade out to the end too. Available at Bandcamp for free/ pay what you want. 

Today is May Day, the bank holiday that celebrates worker’s rights and always seems to promise the start of summer. Last year Pye Corner released a track to mark this, the six minutes and fifty three seconds long, deeply dark/ darkly deep trip of Mayday Acid that would give any Maypole dancing ceremonies a very different edge. 

Mayday Acid

Seven Hours Of The Flightpath Estate At Blossom Street

If last Sunday’s mix, seven and a half hours of the Flightpath Estate DJs playing at The Golden Lion’s AW61 celebrations in April wasn’t enough for you, our outing at Blossom Street Social two weeks previously has just gone up on Mixcloud too- me, Martin, Dan and guest Rob Fletcher playing a seven hour fifteen minute vinyl only set on the afternoon and evening of 17th March. The full set can be found at Blossom Street Social’s Mixcloud. It was the first time a test pressing of our album got played out in the wild, exciting for us even if it didn’t exactly stop the traffic in Ancoats. In the end we played three tracks from it- Justin Robertson’s Deadstock 33s, Andy Bell’s cover of Smokebelch and The Light Brigade’s Human : Remains. 

Rob Fletcher was the man behind Herbal Tea Party, a 90s clubbing institution in Manchester. It started out at the New Ardri in Hulme and moved to Rockworld, midweek techno and electronic music nights that hosted gigs by Andrew Weatherall, Sabres Of Paradise playing live, Orbital, Fabio Paras, The Drum Club, Sven Vath, Psychick Warriors Of Gaia, Justin Robertson and David Holmes among the guests. Rob’s got an exhibition at Electric in Chorlton to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Herbal Tea Party- fliers, posters, tickets plus some recordings of sets and gigs- which has its opening night this Thursday. If you’re in the area, pop down and say hello. 

The set from Blossom Street is a live recording, the Tascam plugged directly into the decks and mixer so there are a few glitches and errors- the sound levels were a bit variable, deck two seeming to drop down in volume at times and the odd technical error here and there (one of us accidentally turning a turntable off at one point and another thinking a record was playing when they were hearing it through the headphones only). Some of the mixing may be a bit hit and miss too; mine especially. If it’s perfection you’re after, we may not be the people you’re looking for. Our tune selection however…

Martin

• Lionrock – Rock Steady Romance
• Innervisions – Mermaids

Rob

• Craven Faults – Deipkier
• Detroit Escalator Co. – Psalm
• Chapterhouse – Alpha Phase (Retranslated by Global Communication) 

Adam 

• Sedibus – Seti (Pt. 2) 
• Coyote – Cirrus 
• Brian Eno – An Ending (Ascent) 

Martin 

• Air – Modulor Mix 
• Purple Penguin – Memphis
• Biome – Skafter 

Rob

• Two Lone Swordsmen – Big Man Original
• The Irresistable Force – The Lie-In King 
• Pye Corner Audio – Exhumed 

Adam

• Tranquility Bass – They Came In Peace
• Four Tet – Loved 
• Coyote – Western Revolution

Martin

• Mad Professor & Chuck D – At Least The American Indians Know Exactly How They’ve Been Fucked Around 
• Craig Bratley ft Amy Douglas – No In Between (Ashigaru Dub) 
• Don Letts – Outta Sync (David Holmes Remix Edit) 

Rob

• Drum Club – Alchemy (D-Fex Dub)
• The Clash – Justice Tonight / Kick It Over
• Leftfield – Release The Pressure (The Desert Edit) 

Dan

• Mode – Lo-Fi Odyssey (Stallions Remix)
• Vanishing Twin – Cryonic Suspension May Save You Life 
• The Circling Sun – Spirits, Pt.2 

Adam

• Panda Bear & Sonic Boom – Whirlpool Dub (Adrian Sherwood Reset In Dub Version)
• The Clash – Bankrobber / Robber Dub 
• JIM – Phoenix (Crooked Goth) 

Martin

• Hedford Vachal – Toys 
• Hiem ft Roots Manuva – DJ Culture (Hiem 2013 Remix)
• The Asphodells – We Are The Axis (Daniel Avery Remix) 

Rob

• Glok – That Time Of Night (Hardway Bros Meet Monkton Uptown)
• The Shamen – Lightspan (Renegade Soundwave Mix) 
• Orbital – Midnight (Live) 

Dan

• Trevor Jackson – Lumiline 
• Hardway Bros – Theme For Flightpath Estate
• The Asphodells – Never There (Hardway Bros Remix) 

Adam

• Rheinzand – Porque 
• The Durutti Column – The Together Mix
• David Holmes – It’s Over If We Run Out Of Love 

Martin

•  It’s Immaterial – Driving Away From Home (Jim’s Tune) 
• Talking Heads – Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) 
• Anthony Teasdale – Deep In The Forest Something Stared 

Rob

• The Liminanas – The Mirror 
• The Primitive Painter – Hope 
• Golden Bug & The Liminanas – Variation Sur 3 Bancs 

Dan

• Patrick Cowley – Jungle Orchids 
• Justin Robertson’s Deadstock 33s – Curtains Twitch On Peaks 
• Richard Norris – Pagan Dub

Adam

• Pete Wylie & The Mighty WAH! – Sinful (Tribal)
• Jo Sims – Bass – The Final Frontier (David Holmes Remix)
• Primal Scream – Uptown (Long After The Disco Is Over) 

Martin

• DAF – Brothers (Mix Gabi)
• Massimiliano Pagliara – It’s A Lately Thing
• Black Strobe – Innerstrings 

Rob

• Two Lone Swordsmen – Glide By Shooting
• The Disco Evangelists – A New Dawn (Back To The World) 
• Headfunk – Dawn Til Dusk

Dan

• Rude Audio – Running Wild
• Llewellyn – These Days (Don’t Make Me Wait)
• The Light Brigade – Human : Remains 

Adam

• Coyote –  Lonely 
• Andy Bell – Smokebelch II

Martin

• Andrew Weatherall – Ghosts Again
• The Asphodells – Another Lonely City
• Bjork – One Day (Springs Eternal Mix)
• Rae & Christian – Swansong (2 Lone Swordsmen Dub)
• Two Lone Swordsmen – Rico’s Helly (Re-Tailored By Nourizadeh And Teasdale) 
• Woodleigh Research Facility – Yaldabaoth 
• Andrew Weatherall – Kicking The River 
• The Asphodells – A Love From Outer Space
• Public Image Ltd. – Careering 
• Throbbing Gristle – Distant Dreams Pt. Two

V.A. Saturday

Following on from Wednesday’s post about Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s Music For A Found Harmonium today’s various artist compilation is the 1994 that made it widely available to the clubbing generation, Cafe del Mar Volumen Uno, a double album compiled by legendary DJ from the titular beach front cafe Jose Padilla. The Cafe del Mar series ran and ran, up to Volumen Veintitres (Volume 23- there’s that number again) plus some Best Ofs, Dreams and something called the Chillhouse Mixes plus some anniversary editions. It spawned the chill out genre, double mix CDs to stick on while relaxing at home in the mid- 90s. We shouldn’t lay the blame for all of this at the Cafe del Mar series- what came after is not the fault of those who came first- and besides Volume 1 of Cafe del Mar is a genuinely brilliant compilation, a VA classic, a perfect selection of tracks. Volumen Dos was very fine too and the subsequent ones all feature some really good tracks- you can get up to Volumen Cinco before running into diminishing returns. 

Volumen Uno is very much an ambient/ ambient house affair, with some definitive tracks, utterly essential whether heard watching the sun go down on the White Isle or coming up after a night out that ended up in a car park in Wigan in winter. It opens with Jose’s own Agua, found sounds, hand drums, pan pipes and then a warm bubble bath of synths. It’s followed by William Orbit’s The Story of Light, six minutes of weightless drift, house rhythms eventually kicking in, chimes, wordless vocals- global ambient.

The Story Of Light

Sabres Of Paradise close side one with Smokebelch (Beatless Mix). I’ve written about this track before, one of those songs that has soundtracked my life in all sorts of ways- we played it at the graveside when we buried Isaac. When we did the Sabresonic Q&A at The Golden Lion in November Jagz and Gary spoke about making the track. It feels like its a fundamental part of me.

Side two has Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Sun Electric’s Sundance (like standing in warm rain) and Leftfield’s mighty Fanfare Of Life, ambient/ dub in excelsis. Side three gives us Sisterlove’s Balearic meditation The Hypnotist and then Second Hand by Underworld. This track was trialed on the sleeve as exclusive to the compilation. Underworld were at the very top of their game in 1994 and Second Hand is as good as anything else they did,  nine minutes of that Underworld synth sound repeating, another wobbling on top, a third chirruping, a little guitar motif, everything building very gradually, no rush to hit the runway too soon. At five minutes there’s a slight change, a pause almost (although everything keeps playing), some tension, the anticipation that something’s about to happen, and then at six minutes twenty the kick drum starts thumping, a snare and whooosh, off we go. 

Second Hand

Side three finishes with Ver Vlads’ Crazy Ivan, all drama and stormclouds. Then we’re onto side four with A Man Called Adam’s wondrous Estelle, Obiman’s On The Rocks and finally Tabula Rasa’s Sunset At The Cafe Del Mar takes us home, a track that is less a piece of music and more a feeling pressed onto vinyl, that ends with a guitar loop and the sound of waves lapping on to the shore.  

Sunset At The Cafe Del Mar

Make It Burn

New from the mighty Tici Taci label comes this three track EP by Mr BC (known in his daily life as Bob Salmond), Make It Burn. There are three mixes/ remixes. The first is the Rave Mix, a seven minute joyride of New Order drums, pulsing sequencers, dive bombing, oscillating synths, stereo panning and squelch… more synths, more kick, more pulse.

Label boss Duncan Gray provides the second version, his own remix, a stripped down version with an 80s Cure- at- the- disco bassline, a bouncy topline, synth strings, and after a build up of nearly three minutes, some glorious, life affirming, hands in the air pianos. 

The third version is a remix by Viper Patrol, a version led by some speaker rattling wobbly bass, and after another lengthy build up, more wondrous piano action that manages that trick that great music does- hedonism and dancing with a tinge of melancholy in the chords. 

Both Duncan and Mr BC also appear on the recent Shelter Me- In Crisis album on Paisley Dark, an eighteen track compilation released to raise money for homeless charities and doing a very good job of it. Duncan’s The Remote Control Thief, Mr BC’s Call To Arms and sixteen others can be found at Bandcamp. Other highlights include a very woozy track from Al Mackenzie, some juddering filth from Hunterbrau and Jezebell’s Perfect Din. Today is Bandcamp Friday where more of the money goes to the artists, in this case to the Beats For Beds charity. 

Duncan is preparing for an album release later this year, a solo album currently going under the title Five Fathoms Full and it promises to be a bit special. More news as and when. Last November Duncan put together an eight hour mix to promote the Tici Taci Decade celebrations, ten years of the label with four compilations. It’s a masterclass in the long form mix, kickin gin at 90 bpms and rising as Duncan puts it to the giddy heights of 120 bmps- if you like your music chuggy and slinky, electronic and bass- led with kick drums and cowbells and sliding into wonky disco/ house/ ALFOS kind of areas, then you could do a lot worse than click play on this tonight and let it unfold. It’s here.