Last weekend’s aurora borealis lit up a lot of people’s Friday nights. I was asleep, unaware this multicoloured, massive global electrical storm triggered lightshow was taking place. I woke up to it the next morning via a phone full of images taken by people near and far. The following night they said we’d see them again but Manchester’s skies were cloudy last Saturday night- quelle surprise. But the afterglow of the northern lights has led to this track recorded by San Francisco’s Marshall Watson, an eight minute synth journey titled Beautiful Light. Marshall says it’s got more than a hint of Rick Smith and Underworld in it- which it has- but it’s more than good enough to stand on its own two feet. The synths kick in immediately, in rippling waves and long euphoric chords with a kick drum providing propulsion. More synths enter at two minutes, dancing melody lines like those flashes of purple and green and blue in the sky. The ghost of a voice appears a little late, hinting at the track’s title. Beautiful skies indeed. Get it here.
In 1979 Neil Young and Crazy Horse released Rust Never Sleeps, an album that was in some ways a response to punk and in some ways, int typical Neil Young fashion, a reworked version of Chrome Dreams (which didn’t come out in the mid- 70s but finally appeared last year). Pocahontas starts with the line ‘Aurora borealis/ The icy sky at night’, Neil setting the scene for a massacre of Native Americans, Neil describing the people being killed in their teepees, babies left crying on the ground, and then the buffalo being slaughtered too.
Pocahontas, known to her people as Matoaka, then becomes the subject of the song as it jumps about jumps about in time, taking in the Houston Astrodome and TV, and then a line about wanting to sleep with Pocahontas ‘to find out how she felt’, a line which felt a little uncomfortable to listen to whenever you first heard it, never mind now in 2024. It ends with Marlon Brando, Pocahontas and Neil. Marlon Brando refused to accept an Oscar for his role as Don Corleone in The Godfather in 1973 in protest at the treatment and portrayal of the Native Americans, sending Sacheen Littlefeather to attend in his place. It’s a beautiful song, one of the centrepieces of Rust Never Sleeps, and one that I always hear playing in my head at any mention of the aurora borealis.
I am 54 today- and all of a sudden the mid- fifties have arrived. I have tied to put together a number 54 based Sunday mix. It turns out 54 isn’t a particularly popular musical number. As so often happens Mr Weatherall came to my rescue along with The Clash and a very famous and debauched New York nightclub and a blinding reggae song. This mix is as a result somewhat varied stylistically and gets even more random towards the end- maybe that’s a metaphor for one’s 50s.
Two Lone Swordsmen: Shack 54 (Joe Mckechnie Remix)
Patrick Cowley and Sylvester: Menergy (Rich Lane ‘Too Hard’ Cotton Dub)
Big Audio Dynamite II: The Globe (Studio 54 Remix)
The Velvet Underground: I Can’t Stand It (2014 version)
The Rolling Stones: All Down The Line
Toots And The Maytals: 54- 46 That’s My Number
Studio 54 was a New York nightclub located at 254 West 54th Street, midtown Manhattan. It was converted from a theatre to a club in 1977 and for a while was the world’s premier disco nightclub, a place with a famously loose approach to sex, drugs and extravagance. It had apparently the world’s most difficult entry policy but once in ‘the dancefloor was a democracy’. A list of Studio 54’s celebrity clientele includes Grace Jones, Woody Allen, Bianca Jagger, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Bowie, Cher, John Lennon, Diana Ross, Lou Reed, John Travolta, Margaret Trudeau, Divine, Farrah Fawcett, Faye Dunaway, Jack Nicolson, Liza Minelli, Rick James and many more. Some of those people were thusly shoehorned into my mix above. Chic famously were turned away at the door and went home and wrote Freak Out, a disco track which started with the phrase ‘Fuck You!’ chanted as the chorus instead of the eventual title.
Grace Jones, a Studio 54 devotee, released her album Nightclubbing in 1981, an early 80sunk/ reggae/ post- punk/ new wave/ disco masterpiece, recorded at Compass Point in the Bahamas. The title track is a cover of Iggy Pop’s 1977 song, an ode to numbed out nighttime adventures on the floor. It’s Grace’s birthday today as well- happy 76th birthday Grace.
Tom Tom Club’s Genius Of Love is also from 1981, a brilliant slice of New York post- disco/ synth- pop/ art rap that nods its head to a cast of black musicians- James Brown, Sly and Robbie, Hamilton Bohannon, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins and Bob Marley- and was a big tune at Studio 54. Its creators, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz only went a couple of times, they claim, preferring the Mudd Club or Danceteria.
The Clash went to Studio 54 once and Joe Strummer said they were observed by the Warhol crowd like animals in a cage. Joe wrote The Beautiful People Are Ugly Too about the experience. Ivan Meets G.I. Joe is from Sandinista!, and includes the line ‘so you’re on the floor at 54’, imagining the Cold War as a competition on the nightclub’s dancefloor, a Soviet- America disco face off, sung by Topper Headon. It’s not my favourite Clash song but it fits this mix.
Shack 54 was on Two Lone Swordsmen’s Wrong Meeting Part 2, a 2007 album with Weatherall and Tenniswood by this pint deep into live rock ‘n’ roll/ garage rockabilly territory. It was great fun, Andrew once again turning on a sixpence and wrong footing people who expected him to keep doing the same thing. This remix of Shack 54 by Joe Mckechnie is I think unreleased.
Patrick Cowley and Sylvester were both Studio 54 attendees. For his Cotton Dub edit Rich Lane ramps up the campness and Hi NRG to the max on a song that wasn’t exactly lacking in either.
Big Audio Dynamite II’s The Globe was the best single the second incarnation of the band released, a 1991 single that samples Mick’s most well known Clash riff. It was a Mick Jones and Gary Stonnage co- write and produced by Mick and Andre Shapps (making both of them related to current Tory Minister Grant Shapps, a man I sincerely hope loses his seat and his deposit come election day). The Studio 54 remix adds some disco strings and keys and has never been officially released but is on the bootleg series The B.A.D. Files.
The Velvet Underground have Studio 54 connections via Lou Reed and Andy Warhol but there’s a big disconnect between the sound of the Velvets and Studio 54 so really this was just an excuse to shoehorn in this 2014 version of a Lou reed song that should be played daily by everyone, Lou and Sterling taking the Bo Diddey beat and rhythm guitar to its logical limit. The part where Lou counts down from 8 is among my favourite moments on any song.
Bianca Jagger once rode into Studio 54 on the back of a white horse, an eye- opening way to celebrate one’s birthday (a party for Bianca thrown by fashion designer Halston). Bianca later said she didn’t ride the horse to or in the club, she just sat on its back once it was already inside. I was going to say, with a knowing smirk, hey, we’ve all been there- but then I remembered that at the Golden Lion last November at the end of a night David Holmes played at the pub there was a horse at the bar having a pint with its owner, so actually, maybe we have all been there. Bianca was married to Mick from 1970 to 1978, a period The Stones made their final absolute classic album, 1973’s Exile On Main Street from which All Down The Line is one of four superb songs that make up the album’s fourth side.
Toots And The Maytals released reggae classic 54- 46 Was My Number in 1968. 54- 46 was Toots’ prison number when he was jailed for possession of marijuana and for the next 365 day trip around the sun, 54 is my number.
Boy’s Own began in 1987, four friends inspired by records, clubbing and clothes (and football)- they started a fanzine inspired by Peter Hooton’s Liverpool based fanzine The End. Andrew Weatherall, Cymon Eckel, Terry Farley and Steven Hall had come together through connections in the Windsor/ Slough area and via Paul Oakenfold began hitting the early acid house clubs. Boy’s Own ran for several years as a very funny, sharp and hipper- than- you fanzine, the ‘acid house parish magazine’. I never saw a copy at the time but did pick up a few issues of The End. Eventually Boy’s Own became a record label too and a band, Bocca Juniors, grew out of it releasing two singles, the first the superb Raise and a second, Substance. Boy’s Own Recordings put out a series of the period’s defining 12″ singles, records by Less Stress, Jah Wobble, One Dove and LSK as well as their own Bocca Juniors singles. Eventually Andrew Weatherall moved on and did something different, as he was wont to do any times over the subsequent decades- he had a knack for knowing when to switch course or change lanes.
In 1992 Farley and Hall created a spin off label, Junior Boy’s Own which stated by putting out a run of essential 12″ singles, some of the key dance music/ house/ techno releases of the mid- 1990s and then moving into the brave new world of dance acts making albums. The Chemical Brothers started on Junior Boy’s Own and Underworld released their three 90s albums on the label, dubnobasswithmyheadman, Second Toughest In the Infants and Beaucoup Fish. In 1994 they compiled a various artists compilation that pulled together some of the records from those first few years, tracks that in some ways are the sound of the period- if you went clubbing in 1993/ 1994 you would have been dancing at some point in those long nights to some or all of Fire Island, X- Press 2, Underworld, Outrage, Roach Motel and The Dust Brothers. The influence of New York house, gay club culture and UK techno is here. The emerging sound of what would become Big Beat and the Heavenly Sunday Social scene can be found here too, not least in the massive sirens and crashing hip hop drums of Song To The Siren, The Dust Brothers’ calling card.
X- Press 2 released London X- Press in 1993, a percussive, relentless house groove and some funky guitar, synth sabs, thumping bass and that ‘raise your hands’ sample accompanied by sirens.
Roach Motel were Pete Heller and Terry Farley, funky, early 90s house, deep, soulful, influenced by New York’s club sound. Would still rock a dancefloor today.
Underworld appeared on Junior Boys Own Collection twice, once as themselves (with Rez) and once as Lemon Interrupt. It originally appeared as 1992 12″ with Eclipse but Bigmouth eclipsed Eclipse, a huge ten minute long Underworld drum track with head spinning lead harmonica on top, a swampy, chuggy, uplifting, funky, shot of 1992, Darren Emerson pushing Rick Smith and Karl Hyde into new places.
The Junior Boy’s Own Collection sleeve was a very knowing mid- 90s thing too, portraits of various faces done as 1940s cigarette cards- Michael Caine, Tommy Cooper, Pete Townsend, Phil Daniels in Quadrophenia, Captain Scarlet, Al Pacino, Norman Wisdom, Sid James, Marlon Brando, Travis Bickle, Mick Jagger, Patrick McNee, Sean Connery, Terry Thomas, W.C. Fields and Zachary Smith.
Two blasts of noise from the late 80s/ early 90s indie/ punk/ alt- rock underground on the verge of going overground on Tv to celebrate reaching the end of the working week and getting to Friday. First is Sonic Youth at their peak, Daydream Nation era, playing the epic rush of Silver Rocket live on MTV in 1988. I remember being quite anti- MTV in 1988, it was one of the frontlines in the indie wars. This performance holds nothing back, Thurston, Kim Lee and Steve bringing the noise, the tempo, the melodies and the energy.
This live version of Silver Rocket was released as part of disc 2 of the Deluxe CD edition of Daydream Nation that came out in 2007. Thurston dedicates it to Andy Warhol. Daydream Nation is the perfect summary of Sonic Youth’s abilities, ambition and expression. An essential album.
The second blast of noise is from My Bloody Valentine, miming on Spanish TV on a programme called Plastic in 1991. This is around the time Loveless was recorded, the second giant leap they made in terms of sound and songs. On Plastic they mime to You Made Me Realise, released in 1988. There is an contrast between the energy and flailing that Debbie and Colm put into miming on bass and drums respectively and the complete lack of physical action from Kevin and Belinda which really does make this clip.
That song, it’s wooziness, the slurred vocals, the rattling drums, and the life affirming noise kicked up the guitars, is a late 80s pearl. Live it’s middle section would become a test of how much an audience could take, pushing the freak out to its extreme in terms of noise, volume and length. This is the studio version, as released on Isn’t Anything.
A few weeks ago a friend sent me a link to an album celebrating it’s tenth anniversary, one that has been re- released on limited pink vinyl with a fetching t- shirt to match- Psychic 9 – 5 Club by HTRK. The group are from Melbourne, Australia, a city someone described to me recently as ‘one of the nicest places to live anywhere on earth’. HTRK (Hate Rock) go back to 2003, a three piece made up of vocalist Jonnine Standish, bassist Sean Stewart and guitarist Nigel Yang. They have traversed various minimal and experimental styles, with a restless energy to their music, sometimes sounding alternately bored to tears and post- coital, sometimes at the same time. Their debut album was produced by The Birthday Party’s Rowland S. Howard, with punk and industrial influences, a slow mo drum machine and bass, textures and atmosphere. They moved into and through post- punk, cold wave and electronic, moving to London, playing gigs with Alan Vega, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Horrors and Fuck Buttons.
In 2010 the band was struck by horror- bassist Sean Stewart was found dead at his London flat, having killed himself. They were partway through recording an album that eventually came out as Work (Work Work), an album of heavy, synth led songs that sound like they have an ominous calling. After that, now working as a duo, Jonnine and Nigel recorded Psychic 9- 5 Club, an album that pushes their sound further again into new territories- the beats and bass are nod to modern r’n’b, to some strange downbeat, dubbed up version of trip hop, by the huge, echo- laden dub spaces of Basic Channel. There are skeletal, pared back beats, minimal instrumentation, loops and a few brooding lines of vocal, the odd line delivered in a smoky bedroom voice. It’s a world of its own- intense, languid, mysterious, not giving much away but sometimes saying too much- ‘I got mood swings I got no control of’, Jonnine coos at one point. It’s an album that works well as an entire piece, the flow through the nine tracks as important part of its appeal, from the r’n’b sounds of Give It Up and the stuttering drums and Portishead vibes of Sunshine to the ghostly, dubby Wet Dream and the more clamorous sounds of Love Is Distraction.
This song is as good a taster as any, sequenced midway through side one- Feels Like Love. Hissing drum machine percussion inside a ball of dub space, synths and minimal descending bass, what could be someone exhaling breath, a looped snatch of backing vocal, FX phasing from the back to front of the mix and towards the end a short burst of laughter, suddenly undercutting the tension.
A friend sent me this recently, an album from January this year which deserves to be heard more widely- OBOST’s Er… Hello? OBOST is multi- instrumentalist Bobby Langfield, just 17 years old and currently studying for his A Levels. Bobby has grown up in a household where the music of Andrew Weatherall, Kraftwerk, Paranoid London and Red Axes was a constant backdrop. Bobby, as OBOST, sings, writes, records and mixes. That this is a debut album, thirteen songs across a slew of electronic styles, is one thing- that it’s been made by someone so young is something else.
Er… Hello? album opens with You Messed With Fire, acoustic guitar chords and the thud of a kick drum and then a wash of guitars, synths and a very distorted voice, everything swimming and swirling around as the kick keeps things moving forward. The sound of fingers on guitar strings appears, handclaps and wobbling synth parts and that voice, never clear enough to hear what it’s saying. It’s a nicely disorientating start followed by some slowed down electronic pop, I Don’t Want To Be Alone, Bobby’s voice and machines pulling off that trick of electronic euphoric melancholy- synths that suggest good times with minor chords and lyrics that hint at something else. Over the course of the ensuing eleven songs there is FX and sample driven electronic music, drum machine driven cosmische, experimental instrumentals, glitchy pop that calls to mind The Xx, rippling synthlines and on Another Type Of World, alienated synth pop with double time drum machine and eventually walls of noise.
The second half of the album spins even further and more wildly, a range of styles and sounds on offer, all the while the fizz and clatter of keys and drums set against the doleful vocals. Penultimate song Hurry Up has a wall of Daniel Avery style drone and static and then the judder of synths and hiss of hi hats, a techno workout. The album finishes with Lips Fade to Blue- it starts with the crackle of vinyl and an acoustic guitar part circling as Bobby sings a lament, and then shifts somewhere else, 80s synth pop colliding with 21st century electro, that dissolves into a mess of repeating loops and FX. You can get it at Bandcamp.
Since Er.. Hello? came out OBOST has followed up with Apollo, a track in two versions, DanceApollo and DubApollo. Both here and free/ name your own price. The Dub version is eight minutes of clashing sounds and samples, thudding drums and eventually some very gnarly slo- mo sounds. I Don’t Care For You came out at the end of 2023, an EP that included this song, Look Inside Your Mind. All of this is highly recommended.
The Woodentops released their latest album in late April, a fourteen track opus called Fruits Of The Deep. Rolo has been working towards this for some time- the first inklings of it came out as the single Ride A Cloud back in 2022 and more recently the slowed down Balearic shuffle of Dream On. The opening five songs of the album, the two already mentioned along with Liquid Thinking, Too Good To Stay and Lately, make as good a run of songs as the band have ever released, matching their late 80s classics from Giant and Wooden Foot Cops On The Highway. The trademark Woodentops acoustic guitars are there, the rattling hubcap percussion and rhythms. Lately rides in on a piano riff and a ringing Simon Mawby lead guitar line, Rolo in fine voice front and centre.
The album takes a sharp left turn after Lately, the three minutes detour into Hotel a disorienting scrambled piece of music, Prince fed through a load of FX dissolving into an ambient soundscape. After that there’s a bluesy shuffle (Don’t Stop), some turbo- charged Woodentops Balearic pop that could have come straight from Hypno Beat Live in 1987 (Saturday Soundcheck), an instrumental that sounds like Lalo Schiffrin’s Bullitt had it been recorded underwater while a train went past (City Wakes) and then three more ultra- Woodentops songs- Can’t Stand Still, I Can Take It and the gorgeous lament Traversing Heartbreak.
Fruits Of The Deep could have finished there- acoustic guitars, Frank de Freitas’ bass, Simon Mawby’s guitars, Rolo’s vocals, loads of layered backing vox, found sounds, the sound of a band building on their glory days of several decades ago but moving on confidently and with as et of fully realised and fleshed out songs that the world needs to hear. But Rolo has two more cards up his sleeve, a sixteen minute finale, a pair of long songs inspired by the sea. The first is The Fishermen Leave At Dusk, eight minutes of impressionistic seascapes, FX and acoustic guitars submerged into the aqua, diving deep while bubbles surface. The second and the track that closes the album is Bathyscaphe, an even more distorted dive into the subaqua world, effects, found sounds, and eventually a slo- mo jam, guitars and drums dredging the seabed, dropping out, returning and building to an echo laden ending.
Buy Fruits From The Deep here. Once enough orders are in Rolo’s going to go ahead with CD and vinyl versions.
This came via a tip off from Dan of The Flightpath Estate, an imminent release on Jason Boardman’s Before I Die label- Dub Tapes Volume 1 by Klangkollektor. There are three tracks to listen to at their Bandcamp page and a further four due when the album releases in full later this week. Sumptuous, deep, richly textured dub with a smattering of ambient techno and a splash of the Balearic feel (mastered by Conny Plank who knows a thing or two about music).
Klangkollektor is Lars Fischer, drummer from Nuremberg’s psychedelic Cumbia band Trak Trak. All three tracks released so far are long- Lake Lounge comes in at just under ten minutes, a dub experiment, all space, echo, rattles and rhythm and some tinkling piano. The six minutes forty seconds of Midnight Express is laid back and bubbly, a trip into an absorbing dreamworld. Globulus is seven minutes plus of spacious, atmospheric dub with a piano line picked out on the top. You can listen and buy here. There must be something going on in Nuremberg- Before I Die released another Nuremberg act’s album last year, Konformer’s self titled debut, an album that opened with the superb Noris Noir.
There was a remix EP with this remix from Sean Johnston. There’s no point trying to describe it, it does exactly what it says on the tin and should be felt rather than read about.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Bagging Area 