Scandinavian disco house is one of the high points of early 21st century popular culture I reckon. DJs and producers like Lindstrom, Prins Thomas and Todd Terje make and play expansive, forward looking and open minded electronic dance music that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Really Deep Snow came out back in August, a nine minute cosmic disco journey from Lindstrom, and part of a four track album called On A Clear Day I Can See You Forever (out in October). Built around a drum machine and a bubbling synth line Really Deep Snow ploughs its way onward, gathering momentum, a drive on a dirt track through the trees, deeper into the forest. A fairly fast paced slow burner, if that makes sense.
Would you like to start your Sunday with a hot off the press Hardway Bros re-edit of Japan’s Life In Tokyo? Of course you would, why wouldn’t you? Sean Johnston has given the 1979 David Sylvian- Giorgio Moroder co-write a sultry update, setting the controls for a nine minute voyage to the heart of the chug. It all gets a bit wiggy and spun out too. Get it here or below.
Whoosh! and oof! This arrived in my Inbox yesterday and is a tremendous racket, a full throttle explosion with flailing, driving, distorted guitars and pounding drums courtesy of Psychic Lemon (a three piece who rehearse and record in a studio in the back of a small garden in Cambridge apparently). They released an album last year called Live At The Smokehouse, a five track, forty- two minute long recording of a show they played in Ipswich. I think Drew turned me on to it. It’s an intense and vivid blast of psyche/kraut/space rock, an instrumental guitar and synth freak out. The song titles alone should give you an idea about what to expect- Interstellar Fuzz Star, Satori Disko, Hey Droog!, Johnny Marvel At The Milky Way and White Light, the song in it’s studio version that they now offer as a free download. Their new album Freak Mammal is out in November. Press play. Turn volume up. Cobwebs blown.
GLOK’s debut album Dissident comes out today, Andy Bell’s seven track cosmic departure, its grooves and bytes full of vibrant kosmiche synths, ambient sounds, motorik drums and stellar guitar parts. The album was sent out digitally when I first ordered it and it sounded great in early summer. I’m looking forward to diving back in with the physical release- it’s well timed too as it chimes well with a lot of what is sitting near my stereo at the moment. Some time ago an edit of the twenty minute title track was sent out to those who’d bought the vinyl/cassette version, an edit by sound engineer Leaf Troup, seven minutes thirty- nine seconds that sounds like outer space exploration with warm pulses and dancing synthlines.
Back in March I posted a pair of tracks by A Mountain Of Rimowa, a driving, electrified, bass-led monster drawing a straight line between West Germany in the 1970s and small nightclubs in 2019 filled with chuggy cosmic disco/house. It shouldn’t therefore be too much of a surprise to find out that the man behind A Mountain Of Rimowa is Sean Johnston, Hardway Brother and one half of ALFOS. The two versions of A.M.O.R. disappeared from Soundcloud a while ago but it is now back digitally, at Bandcamp and Youtube, with a release scheduled for early October. Let there be much psychedelic and groove based rejoicing. Especially if you’re lucky enough to be in Carcassonne this weekend.
I’ve stayed away from blogposts about politics for the last fortnight fearing I was getting a bit repetitive, just pissing into the webwind about the insanity of Brexit and the wide ranging stupidity of Johnson, Rees- Mogg, Farage and all the other fuckers, and the way that the UK was sleepwalking into an actual overthrow of its democracy. But then yesterday happened, the Supreme Court ruling that Johnson and the government acted unlawfully in proroguing parliament, that they suspended parliament, the sovereign body in our political system, to prevent it from doing its job. It’s unprecedented and I cannot believe that (at the time of writing) Johnson has not resigned. Any other UK Prime Minister in modern times, found guilty in such a way (and dragging the monarch into it for good measure) would have gone, by their hand.
I’ve been getting into Snapped Ankles recently, a London based band. Let’s face it, any band content to be photographed like they are above have got to be worth checking out. The have a real DIY, post punk energy about them, the songs on their 2017 debut powered by frenetic drumming and propulsive rhythms, angular guitars and homemade synths twisting noise into shapes. They’ve got a new one out called Stunning Luxury which I haven’t played yet but the Come Play the Trees is a short sharp burst of inspiration. This song, Let’s Revel, is wired and frantic after a slow paced start with an FXed vocal casting a cynical, angry eye over the struggles of modern life ‘let’s revel in dense misery, let’s revel in new chemistry, let’s revel in former glory’.
There’s nothing that compares to Neu! for making that dreamy, linear, soaring krautrock, the motorik beat gently pushing everything ever forwards. Isi is from 1975’s Neu! ’75, Rother and Dinger complementing each other perfectly throughout Side A. Michael Rother’s lush layers of melody and sound on this are gorgeous and hypnotic.
On his recent radio appearance with Heidi, posted here if you missed it, Andrew Weatherall dropped the news that back in 1993 when questioned for the NME’s end of year poll Mark E Smith’s nomination for Wanker Of The Year was Andrew Weatherall. He didn’t go on to say what had gone down between them other than that he (Weatherall) had been lined up to produce an album for The Fall and then for reasons unspecified it didn’t happen. If you want to dip in, it’s at around forty five minutes into the show.
Then Weatherall played this from 2005’s Fall Heads Roll, the centrepiece of that album led by a filthy, churning, propulsive bass guitar riff and chugging drums. Mark speaks into the microphone of walking bass, Aristotle Onassis, Jane Seymour, Calvary and cavalry, Prestwich, Deansgate and Moscow Road, eight minutes that once again proves Mark E Smith and whoever was playing with him at that time were indeed The Fall and that they were capable of coming up with moments of genius.
On Friday night I got the bus to Hulme to see Richard Norris take his ambient/deep listening project on the road. The two Group Mind Abstractions albums he’s put out this year have remained close to my turntable since their release and should be available on the NHS- their effect as a kind of aural medicine, totally absorbing mind clearers and mood enhancers is second to none.
The event was at the Niamos, an old theatre close to the city centre, formerly the Nia Centre and before that the Hulme Hippodrome and Grand Junction. Hulme was famously the home of the Crescents and the birthplace of Factory. Now there are masses of student residences right up to the theatre, buzzing on a warm Friday night. Niamos is an arts and culture hub, cans of Red Stripe behind the bar, the faded grandeur of the theatre interior and a boho vibe. It’s so relaxed there wasn’t even anyone checking tickets on the door. I was expecting a Group Mind night for some reason and hadn’t quite realised until I got there that Richard was supporting a Brighton band/collective called Partial Facsimile. A see through screen was hung across the front of the stage with fractals, shapes and digital waves and cities projected onto it during Richard’s set. He played for just over half an hour, long drawn out sounds, warm waves of ambient noise and twinkling riffs, the 5.1 surround sound really proving its value. Sitting in the main, tiny auditorium as part of a very small crowd- there were fewer than thirty people there- the effect was striking, encompassing and enveloping. I loved it but wanted more. I’d have happily immersed myself in the Group Mind for another hour or two.
Partial Facsimile are a surround sound and visual art collective, four guitarists, three playing sitting down, and a drummer plus keys playing long, drone rock, plenty of reverb and space with FX pedals- a little like an expanded Spacemen 3 but without the drugs and the walking with Jesus. The songs comment on modern life- commuting, social media, lives lived through screens, fake news, climate change, Brexit, immigration- and films cutting up images of the same projected onto the screen while the group play. At the end of each song a QR code appears, linking to articles and research. Pretty interesting and worth seeing even if the realisation that I wasn’t getting any more Richard Norris and his Group Mind initially left me a bit deflated. Below is a clip, a minute’s worth, that I took during Richard’s set. I don’t usually film parts of gigs on my phone but having a visual and audio record of this show seemed like a good idea- part of me wishes I’d filmed the whole thing.
In 2009 Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve released a compilation album rounding up their remixes and re-animations of a bunch of artists- The Chemical Brothers, Franz Ferdinand, Late Of The Pier, Peter, Bjorn and John, Tracey Thorn, Badly Drawn Boy, Goldfrapp, Midlake, Dust Galaxy, Real Ones, Simian Mobile Disco and Findlay Brown. At the same time that album was released Erol Alkan and Richard Norris were asked to mix all their versions together into a single, hour long set for a special download edition. They went back to their versions, took some of them apart again, re-assembled them and then stitched the whole thing together. A decade later it has re-appeared online for your enjoyment, an hour of psychedelic, electronic, time shifting, retro- futuristic exploration. There should be something in this for everyone to enjoy.
Bagging Area 