David Harrow, formerly resident of the On U Soundsystem house band now resident of Los Angeles, continues to write, record and release music. His most recent piece of work was a seven track album called By The River, inspired by the ‘concrete lined trash tube known as the LA river’. David has often headed down to the river and a concrete amphitheatre near Frogtown to play and record modular synths outdoors. By The River takes parts of those recordings as its starting point and then heads out into a beautiful ambient, experimental space. Opening track Icelander is eight minutes of gorgeous drones, synth sounds, delay and filters and echo, and some piano notes dappled over the top. It floats and enchants and is as good a way to start Monday morning as any other I can think of.
There’s a part of me that feels like whenever I post anything by Can I become the narrator of LCD Soundsystem’s Losing My Edge…
‘I’m losing my edge/The kids are coming up from behind/ I’m losing my edge to the kids from France and from London/ But I was there…. I was there in 1968/ I was there at the first Can show in Cologne…’
Can’s music is so other, so different from so much else. It feels like it could only have been create din West Germnay in the late 60s, a period when the de- Nazification of the immediate post war years was seen as being completed (by the authorities) and the new war, a Cold War, was now a much bigger concern to both sides than what Uncle Dieter did during the war. The kids born in the FRG in the aftermath of World war Two grew up in the politically charged environs of the mid- to- late 60s, student protests across the western world against the war Vietnam and American imperialism, the decades long rising tide of anger in the US about civil rights, the events of Mai ’68 in Paris, the spread of hippy ideals and music, long hair and casual attitudes to life, the Soviet invasion of Prague that shattered many European Communists… all this and in West Germany the actual front line of the Cold War and the increasing gnawing sensation that your teachers, university lecturers, neighbours, parents even, had not really told you what they did during the war. Drummer Jaki Liebezeit said by 1968 the prevailing attitude among the youth was ‘don’t trust anyone over thirty’. The musicians that became Can (and Neu! and Amon Duul and Kraftwerk and Popul Voh and Faust and all the other bands born in the same period but all sounding very distinct from each other eventually) were also concerned with rejecting not just pre- war German culture, the schlager pop and traditional German music tainted with Nazi- ism, but also the music coming from the USA. The new West German music needed to be progressive, modern, confrontational, a rejection of other influences and decidedly European.
Can’s music from their beginnings in 1968 to their ending in 1979 (and subsequent reunions) marries the avant garde with psychedelic rock and thanks largely to Liebezeit with a funk rhythm that is unmatched. The motorik beat, the seemingly endless, metronomic drumming, is Liebezeit’s gift. The musicians that became Can with him- Holger Czukay, Irwin Schmidt and Michael Karoli plus the vocalists Micahel Mooney and then Damo Suzuki- seemed to make music without a leader, without a single dominant force, sharing the responsibilities for writing and playing together and they often sound like they’re playing in a circle, facing each other, locked into the music.
…And More is the b-side to their 1976 hit single I Want More, Can finding a sort of krautrock/ disco hybrid. The single was a UK hit, their only one, and led to an appearance on Top Of The Pops.
Moonshake is from 1973’s Future Days album, also a single and a short, almost pop structured song on a an album of much lengthier experimental, more ambient tracks. Future Days is the title track from that album.
Vitamin C is from Ege Bamyesi, released in 1972 and as good a starting point as any- it was mine.
Oh Yeah and Mushroom are from 1971’s Tago Mago, their second album and often held up as their masterpeice. It was they recorded in a castle near Cologne after Mooney left the group and they discovered Damo Suzuki busking.
Mother Sky in its original form is fourteen minutes long and appeared on their 1970 album Soundtracks, after being recorded for a film called Deep End starring Jane Asher. Pilooski’s edit is from 2007.
Damo Suzuki continues to tour, turning up in towns across the world and recruiting local musicians to back him on stage as his Sound Carriers. Every night a different line up, every gig different. Back in the late 00s I was out in Manchester for a few drinks with friends and we walked past Night And Day. As we passed the venue the door swung open and I looked in and could see Damo Suzuki on stage at the far end of the bar. ‘Fucking hell’, I said, ‘That’s Damo Suzuki’. At that moment three men came through the door, the one at the front saying, ‘I wouldn’t bother lads, it’s shit’.
On the other hand, my friend and brother- in- law Harvey played with Suzuki as a Sound Carrier in Leicester one night several years ago and still I think sees it was one of those incomparable nights.
Brand new and a Bandcamp exclusive, this is Triumphe der Liebe, seven minutes of dark Balaerica, a proper cosmic chugger, transporting the listener from the track’s origins in Stourbridge to somewhere much further away. Triumphe der Liebe is the work of the mysterious Dirt Bogarde. Twinkles, hissing sounds, sci fi bleeps, wobbly synths, backing vocals covered in echo drifting in and out, all very cool. Buy it for one pound here. Highly recommended.
You can find Triumphe der Liebe as the opening track on the latest Higher Love mix from Balearic Ultras, out a few days ago on Mixcloud along with music from the likes of Max Essa, Pilots of Peace, Breakbeat Convention, Vanity Project and Voice Of Art. Listen here.
Out on Higher Love Recordings are Polish outfit Jazxing whose Pearls Of The Baltic Sea is one of the albums of the autumn round here. I posted their track Fala a few weeks ago, a gorgeous sax led, chilled groove. The rest of the album is equally good. Harbor Dub is very relaxed and, surprise surprise, dubby with a synth bassline deep enough to sink into.
Shoegaze Dub chugs along beautifully, slo mo beats, keyboard chords, crashing drums and a warm guitar lick and no need to be anywhere in a hurry.
The Comet Is Coming, an avant- jazz/ psychedelic/ electronic/ funk trio, came back in September with a new album that I’m only catching up with now. The three members- clarinetist and saxophonist King Shabaka, keyboard player Danalogue and drummer Betamax- hold nothing back, pushing everything as far as they and it can go. Back in 2016 Shabaka told The Quietus, ‘Go as hard as possible within being musical’ and they live up to that with their music. The new album, titled Hyper- Dimensional Expansion Beam, has a track on it called Aftermath, which starts out with fast synthbass, sounding like the theme to Stranger Things sped up and amped up, and then shifts deeper into 80s soundtrack territory, into the realms of Vangelis’ Blade Runner or John Carpenter’s Escape From New York, re- imagined and then taken further, synth and keyboard solos and runs rolling around on top.
Back in 2019 their second album Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery came to my attention after I was tipped off by a friend about this track, Summon The Fire, a sax and drums led masterpiece, the rhythms and keys twisting around, long cinematic synth chords pushing buttons, and the horn parts suggesting something both euphoric and dystopic.
Part three of a new series, where reader Spencer sends me a suggestion for a song and I write about it. Two weeks ago we started with the DFA remix of Mars, Arizona by Jon Spencer’s Blues Explosion and last week Motor Bass Get Phunked Up from La Funk Mob. Spencer sent the latest suggestion through a few days ago and now we are going thisaway…
I-f’s Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass came out in 1998, Dutch electro courtesy of Ferenc E. van der Sluijs. I-f is short for Interr- Ference. What the Dutch don’t know about smoking grass isn’t worth knowing. Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass is sublime late 90s electro, a machine bassline that threatens to bust the speakers it buzzes so violently, lazer beam sound effects ricocheting around the place and those robotic vocals. The snare and hi- hats are right at the edge of things too, everything, in the classic Motorhead tradition, louder than everything else. Over at Youtube someone has left the comment, ‘This track will be relevant until the end of time’ and that is in no way an overestimation.
By the late 90s dance music had transformed and turned itself inside out on multiple occasions, splintering into scenes and genres, sub- scenes and sub- genres. Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass has a timelessness that doesn’t root it in the late 90s, it could be from a decade earlier or later, it transcends. Catchy as you like, accessible and abrasive, and weirdly, despite being so robotic and mechanical, it has a very human centre to it too- space invaders have a human heart. I guess they’d have to, to enjoy smoking.
All this is also turning into a potentially rather great longform mix- The Spencer Sessions maybe- with the songs from this series eventually skillfully/ clumsily sequenced togethe
The new Unloved album, The Pink Album, is a twenty song, ninety minute opus full of girl group drama and atmospherics, Wrecking Crew instrumental sounds, a 21st century take on the 60s sound. Number In My Phone started as a moment, David Holmes scrolling through his mobile and realising he had the phone number of someone who had died (Andrew Weatherall as it happens but then also that he had his sister’s and parents’ numbers too), still had voice recordings but that they were gone- ‘Even though you passed on/ I’ve still got your number in my phone’. Unloved singer Jade Vincent took the line and worked it into a full lyric and the Unloved trio then took the Tales Of The Unexpected theme tune as a musical inspiration.
Back in the early 90s David was part of The Disco Evangelists with Ashley Beedle, releasing De Niro, a progressive acid house thumper. Now, thirty years later Ashley has remixed Unloved in his Black Science Orchestra guise. Number In My Phone (Black Science Orchestra Remix) a lovely, slinky, bouncy take on the original, an acid bassline and some piano giving it a dancefloor groove. .
Pete Wylie and the latest version of The Mighty Wah! played at Night And Day in Manchester on Sunday night, a sold out gig at a small, capacity 250. Taking the stage in a red, white and blue Sex Pistols shirt and black hat he sees as pleased to see us as we are to see him. The stage at Night And Day is tucked into the corner at the back, really intimate as gig spaces go with the audience gathering round the front and the side as Wylie laughs off some technical issues, a repeating loop of feedback clearly audible which they can’t get rid of and are just going to play over the top of. Pete starts singing the Johnny Thunders song You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory, and that’s the cue for both me and Lou to start welling up. Then the band launch into Come Back and we’re off into Wylie- land. He promised ‘all the hits’ and that’s exactly what we get, an hour and a half of Wylie back catalogue interspersed with plenty of talk, Pete talking, telling stories, explaining the background to songs and cracking jokes- he says he’s writing his memoir (his Mem- Wah) and if all he did was transcribe his between song chatter he’d have the first draft already done. The tales come thick and fast, and among others I can’t recall now include the story of why The Story Of The Blues missed out on reaching number one, a misadventure involving backing tapes, the Musician’s Union and Duran Duran, and a very funny anecdote where Wylie, Ian McCulloch, Julian Cope and Pete Burns all go to the same dole office to sign on in the late 70s. All four are asked what job they want. Burns, ‘in full regalia’, replies to the DHSS officer, ‘shepherd’.
There is a long explanation of the CIA and their attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro which inspired the song Better Scream, a 1980 single, and a blistering version of the song. The Day Margaret Thatcher Dies gets a big response (Pete says he was writing a song about Liz Truss but she’d resigned before he finished it). Free; Falling (In Love With You) from 2017’s Pete Sounds has echoes of Neil Young and Crazy Horse. Sinful, prefaced as an ‘all purpose protest song’, is a massive sounding outsider anthem which segues into Bowie’s Heroes halfway through and then back into Sinful. He talks movingly about Janice Long, a friend and a champion of Wah!, who died last year, and of Josie Jones and Andrew Weatherall, dedicating an emotive Four Eleven Forty Four to them, with Pete’s daughter Mersey’s backing vocals present virtually. Heart As Big As Liverpool, not necessarily a song you’d expect to get a rousing reception in Manchester, is played and sung along to, Pete saying it’s about a feeling not a place (even though we know it’s about a place too). Then we get a magnificent romp through The Story of The Blues, a roomful of middle aged men and women singing every word back to the band. The encore takes place immediately, the band staying on stage, as Pete says, because ‘they can’t arsed going down those little stairs and then back up again’. Seven Minutes To Midnight, all loud, ringing guitars and Cold War fear, fills the room.
Pete Wylie may not have a massive back catalogue but the songs he has written and that get played tonight cut through, striking chords and hitting home, emotive songs about life, love and social injustice. More power to him. Pete, Wah! and his songs should be much better known than they are.
Live music has a huge effect on me at the moment- I’ve said before at various points this year how often I’ve cried in response to songs at gigs in the aftermath of Isaac’s death. Live music transports me too, lifting me out of it everything. In a small room, with enthusiastic crowds and songs that mean something, drums and guitars and vocals filling the space up, somehow for a short period I’m somewhere else. Several times tonight Pete Wylie’s songs trigger tears, making me well up and wipe my eyes. They’re those sort of songs and we’re in that sort of place. Today is Lou’s birthday, tickets to the gig were part of the celebrations. We’ve had a rough few days and today will bring its own difficulties- it’s her first birthday since Isaac died, and his birthday and the anniversary of his death are fast approaching. But we’re trying to celebrate too and as Pete sings in Come Back, ‘Well did you ever hear of hope?/ A small belief can mean/ You never walk alone/ And did you ever hear of faith? It’s all up to you/ Yes, it’s all up to you’.
On Saturday, the leaves all started to suddenly appear rust and gold among the green, the sort of sight that says proper autumn, beautiful spread of colour and crisp blue skies. Not for long though. On Sunday it rained heavily all day, the leaves turning to sludge in gutters and puddles.
To add insult to injury, Boris Johnson returns too, a man removed only three and half months ago from office for lying and lawbreaking, now suddenly seemingly the answer to the Bizarro world of the Conservative Party and it’s ongoing psychodrama that the rest of us are forced to live in.
Here’s some genuine beauty to compensate from Brighton’s Higher Love label today and their recently released Vol. 2 compilation. The closing track is by Mass Density Human, a gorgeous twelve minute piece of music called Emulate which when you describe makes it sound like less than the sum of its parts- some long drawn out synth chords, a pulsing bassline, some electronic drums, a plinking sound, like a pipe being tapped with a metal tool. Emulate builds into something epic, space age and futuristic, music to soundtrack lives and moments, climbing ever upwards. As the track heads on into eight, nine, ten minutes, you start to wonder whether it can or even should ever end.
The pair of albums Ride have made since they reformed- Weather Diaries from 2017 and 2019’s This Is Not A Safe Place plus the four track Tomorrow’s Shore EP from 2018- show a band who haven’t reformed just to play the heritage rock circuit, hawking their three decades old back catalogue round to crowds who want a night of nostalgia (though they do that too, and one of the best gigs I’ve been to this year was the band’s 30th anniversary of Nowhere tour at the Ritz back in April so please don’t imagine I’m being a bit sneery about heritage rock although I appreciate I was a tad critical of Primal Scream’s Screamadelica gig in July so maybe don’t come here expecting consistency).
Ride’s re- union has produced a slew of good songs that stand alongside the older ones. At The Ritz six months ago after they’d played Nowhere, the second half as a mix of old and new, three re- union songs played alongside Twisterella, OX4 and Leave Them All Behind, and they all blended in perfectly, played by a band more than up for it, old tensions resolved and new sounds and kit allowing them to stretch out. The mix below is eight songs made since they reformed, three of which they played at The Ritz (Kill Switch, All I Want and Lannoy Point).
Pulsar was the lead track on Tomorrow’s Shore, a soaring piece of melodic space rock, as good as anything they’ve done. The EP was closed by Catch You Dreaming. All the reunion records have been produced by Erol Alkan and mixed by Alan Moulder
Lannoy Point opens Weather Diaries. All I Want is from that album too, here in GLOK remix form, Andy Bell remixing his own band. Cali is for me the album’s highlight and their finest reunion song, six and a half minutes of blissed out, post- shoegaze guitar rock. It was a big part of the soundtrack to our summer holiday on the Atlantic coast of France that year too and always reminds me of the sand dunes, beaches and sunsets around Messanges, Bayonne and Biaritz.
R.I.D.E., Kill Switch and Future Love are all from 2019’s This Is Not A Safe Place album, Future Love in particular sounding like The Byrds reborn for the 21st century.
I’ve said it before here and I’ll probably end up saying it again, Sandinista! may not be the best Clash album but it could well be their greatest achievement- thirty six tracks over six sides of vinyl, covering every conceivable style of music they could think of, self produced at various locations from Pluto Studio in Manchester to The Power Station in New York and Channel One in Kingston, Jamaica, with a range of guests and extra players (including but not only Ellen Foley, Norman Watt Roy, Mickey Gallagher, Tymon Dogg, Mikey Dread, Ivan Julian, Den Hegarty, Gary Barnacle, Lew Lewis and Style Scott) and the band believing they were getting one over on CBS by putting out six sides of vinyl at a pay no more than £5.99 price.
Every side (well, almost every side, side six is admittedly an opinion splitter) has stone cold classic or genuine lost/ hidden gems and even a conservative estimate would say the following songs were essential Clash- The Magnificent Seven, Something About England, Rebel Waltz, The Crooked Beat, Somebody Got Murdered, One More Time and One More Dub, Up In Heaven (Not Only Here), Police On My Back, The Call Up, Washington Bullets, Broadway, Charlie Don’t Surf, Kingston Advice and The Street Parade. Tucked away on side five is possible the most Sandinista!- esque of all the songs on Sandinista!
The music is from recoding session done with Mikey Dread at Pluto in February 1980, an instrumental backing track called Shepherd’s Delight (which re- appears in dub form at the very end of side six), clearly derived from juices flowing while they recorded Bankrobber in Manchester in the snow. Now moved to New York and inspired by the city, it’s nightlife and the people that live there, Joe Strummer lays down an astonishing stream of consciousness talking blues, reeling in a cast including Bo Diddley, Errol Flynn, Joe Ely, Sir Isaac Newton, the sale of London Bridge to a town in Arizona, Buddy Holly and Elvis, a voodoo shaman and Samson, Fender guitars and Mexican suits, the drummer man, wall Street and Electric Ladyland. ‘Let’s hear what the drunk man’s got to say’, he exclaims at one point. Later on, Strummer ad libs into a conversation with a girl he bumps into in a bar and asks if she needs ‘a cowboy in bus depot jeans’.
Strummer, Jones and engineer Bill price split the vocals into the left and right channel, two Strummer’s at once. Sax comes from Clash friend Gary Barnacle, overdubbed in Wessex back in London later on and as the horn wails away and the dub backing thunders on, Joe’s voice comes in from left and right, the sound of New York at night captured and of music talking.
Bagging Area 