I don’t know how many times I’ve mentioned A Certain Ratio here recently but they seem to be popping up with a welcome regularity- the Sir Horatio v Chris Massey Music Control single from earlier this year, the recent ACR remix of Number both stand out (not to mention the still unbelievably sad death of Denise Johnson). The band are gearing up for the release of a new album in September, an ten track record called Loco, and last week put this out ahead of it…
It comes out of the speakers like an updated 2020 version of one of the highlights of 1990’s ACR: MCR, Spirit Dance specifically, bassline, acid squiggles, a ton of cowbell and some serious rhythms.
If you didn’t get the Sir Horatio single here’s a reminder, funky as you like and a video collage to push the buttons of your memory.
This arrived via email and has gone straight to the top of my listening list, a sharp focussed four minutes of fun from Number (Rich Thair and Ali Friend, both also of Red Snapper). Number’s album Binary came out earlier this year, an exhilarating blast of punk- funk, dance rhythms, live drums, grooves and DIY, songs you can dance to. The song Wedge has now been rejigged by A Certain Ratio, a partnership that seems blindingly obviously really and the end result is this…
And if that doesn’t shine some light into your day and set you off with some bounce in your step I don’t know what will. Wedge (ACR Rework) sounds like exactly the sort of tune that should soundtrack a party at The Face magazine’s end of year knees up in 1983 while also being bang on the 2020 money. A vibrant and energetic re-working, vocals and whistles and laser noises riding over a funked up rhythm and squelchy bassline. And yet more proof that ACR are firing on all cylinders.
It was genuinely shocking and so sad to read yesterday afternoon of the sudden death of Denise Johnson. Denise was a feature of the Manchester music scene for the last three decades and her voice is scattered through my record collection, from Hypnotone’s Dream Beam in 1990 to singing on Primal Scream’s Screamadelica album, especially Don’t Fight It, Feel It single, the wondrous Screamadelica song from the 1992 e.p. and the Give Out But Don’t Give Up lp (and the recently released original version The Memphis Recordings where her voice really shines), Electronic’s 1991 single Get The Message and then the many years she spent singing as a member of A Certain Ratio. Her voice is all over the ACR: MCR album and the Won’t Stop Loving You single and it’s remixes, all personal favourites. She sings on Ian Brown’s Unfinished Monkey Business (the first and best Ian Brown solo album). In 1994 she released a solo single Rays Of The Rising Sun, a song with Johnny Marr on guitars and with an epic thirteen minute remix by The Joy.
In the last few years I’ve seen Denise sing with ACR on several occasions, at Gorilla (above), in Blackburn, at the university and The Ritz (below). She was always an engaging stage presence, smiling and waving at people in the front row. What’s particularly cruel about her passing now is that ACR have a new album ready for release in the autumn and she had very recently announced the imminent release of her debut solo album, a collection of cover versions of songs, just her voice and acoustic guitar.
Her singing with Primal Scream, especially on this song, was a breakthrough for the group. No Bobby Gillespie, no guitars, just Denise’s voice and Andrew Weatherall and Hugo Nicolson’s production- that juddering rhythm, house pianos and those spacey noises and Denise singing ‘rama lama lama fa fa fi/ I’m gonna get high ’til the day I die’. The remix for the 12″ was even better and further out than the single mix, her voice chopped up, rejigged and sprinkled throughout the song.
At all their recent gigs A Certain Ratio have finished their set with Shack Up, their cover of Banbarra’s funk song, remade in early 80s Manchester as scratchy, punk- funk song. THis clip shows them back in 1990 on MTV, Denise centre stage…
Denise used to live round the corner from us and we were on smiling and saying hello terms but not much more than that. At ACR’s gig at The Band On The Wall in 2002 launching their Soul Jazz compilation, the moment when they really began to get recognition for their role and music, she clocked us from the stage and winked and smiled. She was an active and lovely presence on Twitter, always positive and giving her views on politics, football and music. She came across as a genuine, friendly and lovely person. Social media was awash with tributes to Denise yesterday and reactions to the awful news and from people who were close to her and who worked with her. She was spoken of with real warmth and it was clear what she meant to people. She will be hugely missed. I’m sure everyone will join in sending their condolences to her family, friends and bandmates. What a shitty year 2020 has been.
Five weeks into these isolation mixes already- doesn’t time fly when you’re socially restricted? There is a higher BPM count on this mix but also some folky darkness and post punk dread from Nick Drake and A Certain Ratio respectively, some dance grooves from Ellis Island Sound and Scott Fraser, the ultra Balearic vibes of Richard Norris’ Time And Space Machine remix of A Mountain Of One, some 1990 class from World Unite when Creation Records went all E’d up and dancey, Andrew Weatherall remixing Moby and Wayne Coyne in epic style, half of The Clash with Frank Ocean and Diplo plus the West Los Angeles Childrens’ Choir (brought to you in association with Converse) from 2014 and a very long Seahawks remix of Tim Burgess, some headspinning ambient noise set against Harry Dean Stanton’s monologue from Paris, Texas. ‘Yep, I know that feeling’.
Tracklist:
Nick Drake: ‘Cello Song
A Certain Ratio: Winter Hill
Ellis Island Sound: Intro, Airborne, Travelling (Scott Fraser Remix)
A Mountain Of One: Ride (The Time And Space Machine Remix)
World Unite: World Unite
Moby Ft. Wayne Coyne: Another Perfect Life (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
Frank Ocean, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Diplo: Hero
Tim Burgess: A Gain// Stoned Alone Again Or (Seahawks Remix) v Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski and Ry Cooder: I Knew These Two People, Paris Texas soundtrack
Manchester DJ and producer Chris Massey remixed A Certain Ratio’s Dirty Boy single last year, a delirious blend of biting acid house, northern funk and the voices of Tony Wilson and Barry Adamson. Now comes this, Chris Massey with a one off single with Sir Horatio (I’m sure you can figure out who that is) plus some remixes from Sink Ya Teeth and See Thru Hands, three hundred vinyl copies available through Piccadilly Records (out today assuming mail order is still a going concern- it was yesterday).
The song, Music Control, is an intoxicating dance floor monster, acid bassline and growly vox, ACR:MCR updated for 2020. The video is spliced together footage of dancers, TV show titles, drugs, Manchester, robots and marchers, technology and rave graphics, models and nightclubs, a social history of the last three decades in four minutes forty. I’m hitting replay quite frequently.
I read an article recently that claimed that making end of year lists was merely an attempt to forestall death, that ranking and ordering things is for people who have an unnatural fear of death and who must be constantly trying to leave things in order before they go. A bit dark perhaps. A similar argument says that making lists is an attempt to place order on a chaotic and uncontrollable world- and one glimpse at the news will confirm that the world is both those things and getting more so- and people (men mainly) feel that if they can rank their albums/books/films then they have at least controlled a part of that world. So, with all those things being as they are, here’s my end of year list. It doesn’t seem to have much in common with the end of year lists I’ve read in the ‘proper’ music press or websites- so I must be out of step with what’s really the best of the 2019. All I can offer you is what I’ve loved the most this year and some examples to sample.
Singles/songs/remixes/e.p.
There’s a lot of chuggy, cosmic, Balearic, ALFOS style releases in this list, a top 30 for 2019, a golden year for music that evokes outer space, Mediterranean beaches and/or basement clubs thick with dry ice.
1. Silver Apples Edge Of Wonder (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
Released for Record Shop Day in April this remix is nine minutes of total joy, a dream turned into sound- the pitter patter drum machine giving gentle propulsion, the bouncy keyboard riff and metallic sounds echoing round and round and the softly sung vocal- ‘waves, waves, Neptune’s metronomes… relentless heartbeat of the sea’.
2. A close second was this three track release from Pines In The Sun, Albanian Balearica via Brighton. I know next to nothing about them but the wordless, sunshine shimmer of Sun and the gorgeous sprawl of Zig Zag Sea (plus Duncan Gray’s remix of the latter) soundtracked much of my summer.
3. Apiento‘s single Things We Do For Love came out back at the start of the year, a slow motion dance floor shaped ode with synth bass and whispered vocals. My main regret is not being quick enough to get a copy of the limited run of 7″s.
4 and 5. A Certain Ratio have spent the year celebrating their fortieth anniversary and released this pair of superb songs, one a previously unreleased cover version from 1980 that was intended to be voiced by Grace Jones, the dark funk of House In Motion and the other a very Mancunian remix of their Dirty Boy single (featuring Barry Adamson and the voice of Tony Wilson), remixed by Chris Massey. The Dirty Boy remix in particular has floated my boat.
From this point onward there are a slew of singles, remixes and e.p.s that I’ve enjoyed this year, loads of brilliant music showing that 2019 has been a really good year. The next dozen or so especially have all been on heavy rotation.
6. Moon Duo Lost Heads 7. Meatraffle Meatraffle On The Moon (Andrew Weatherall Remix) 8. Four Tet Teenage Birdsong 9. A Mountain Of Rimowa A.M.O.R. e.p. 10. Plaid Maru (Orbital Remix) 11. Hardway Bros Chateau Comtal 12. Scott Fraser and Louise Quinn Together More 13. Four Tet Anna Painting 14. GLOK Dissident 15.Roisin Murphy Incapable (plus the pair of incredible Crooked Man remixes/dubs) 16. Craig Bratley Message To The Outpost e.p. 17. Field Of Dreams No 303 18. Fjordfunk Exile (including the Hardway Bros remix) 19. The Comet Is Coming Summon The Fire 20. Ride Future Love 21. A Man Called Adam Paul Valery St The Disco (Prins Thomas Remix) 22. KH Only Human 23. Shape Of Space Manifesto 24. Warriors Of The Dystotheque Things In The Shadows (Tronik Youth Remix) 25. ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ e.p. 26. Shunt Voltage Link Up/ See It In Your Eyes 27. Boy Division Hot Pants 28. Dan Wainwright Keep Me Hangin’ On (with Hardway Bros dub remix) 29. Duncan Gray Much Much Worse/ Where Clock Goes 30. Terr Tales Of Devotion (including the Prins Thomas Diskomiks)
Four Tet/Kieran Hebden has had a particularly good 2019, always innovative and entrancing and producing some of the best moments in a variety of guises and across a series of releases, including a live album recorded at Ally Pally in the summer that I’ve only just started listening to.
Albums
I’ve bought and listened to what seems like an enormous amount of albums this year. The internet and streaming has made individual songs the focus again, a return to the halcyon days of the 7″ and 12″ single and their B-sides, and occasionally people write about the death of the album and the forty/seventy minute format (depending on whether its a vinyl album or CD). Looking through my pile of records and CDs and lists of downloads the album looks in really good health to me. There’s more breadth to my album list, a wider variety of sounds and styles. I’ve fallen into an ambient/drone wormhole many times this year, a wonderful place to stay for extended periods. Psychedelia and cosmic psych rock has been at the front of the pile a lot. These are in no particular order, the first eight I genuinely couldn’t pick between in terms of a favourite or a ranking, they’re all the albums of the year.
Glok Dissident
Andy Bell (the guitarist from Ride) released the surprise of the year, a rich, gorgeous flotation through cosmic psychedelia, motorik drums and West German sounds, awash with floaty, dreamy synths and guitars. From the Tron-esque sleeve to the luminous green vinyl to the grooves contained within everything about this album was spot on.
Richard Norris Abstractions Vol. 1
Richard Norris has been exploring ambient music throughout 2019 (and before). This year he has released a pair of albums, Abstractions Vol. 1 and 2, filled with extended repetitive sounds, loops of melody, chimes and washes, drones, ambient noise, waves of reassuring sounds- deep listening. This year has been a car crash in many ways. The whole Brexit debacle, the constant noise and feelings of loss of control over our politics and culture, the sense of loss and the feeling that we’re being driven over the edge by fanatics. This album has helped me switch off from it. I can put this on and it works in a calming way that nothing else does. If there’s an N.H.S. left in five years time, this pair of albums should be available on prescription.
Meatraffle Bastard Music
Bastard Music is a strange record, surreal, bold and in places very funny. A vision of dystopia set to a ramshackle beat and some memorable melodies. Lyrically it deals with everything- nationalism, the exploitation of workers, Brexit, living in London versus living in the country, immigration, the price of renting, sexism, science fiction, activism, everything… but it’s never overbearing or humourless and the lyrics and vocals force you to listen to it rather than just have it on. Musically it’s lo fi synthy disco, horns and Pulp Fiction guitars, home made rhythms, reggae and post punk. In some ways Bastard Music makes no sense and in others it makes more sense than any other album released in 2019. It’s an amazing record in lots of ways not least in the the song Meatraffle On The Moon, one of the very best things I’ve heard this year- a song that really should be up at the top of the singles list with Silver Apples and Pines In The Sun- a dub pop exploration of human workers enslaved and working on the moon, their comradeship and valiant attempts to survive with only the meatraffle to look forward to. Semi- stoned drums, a snaking horn, dub bass and the ace vocals.
Moon Duo Stars Are The Light
My favourite guitar/synth/drums psych- rock explorers put out their latest album in September, Stars Are The Light, and have found a new love of disco and dance music and ecstatic grooves. It’s still clearly the work of the band who made the darker, heavier Occult Architecture albums but now with their faces turned to the sun. The synths and drums dance around, the rhythms are aimed at the feet and lighter than before and the twin vocals are airy and optimistic. Their live show in October was an immersive psychedelic experience. I don’t think there’s an album I’ve bought this year that I’ve listened to more than this one.
Steve Cobby Sweet Jesus
One man cottage industry from Hull, Steve Cobby dropped Sweet Jesus onto the internet live back in the summer, twelve songs recorded in his shed, taking in cool Balearic vibes, lush instrumentals, downtempo funk and synths and lots of acoustic guitars. The opening song, As Good As Gold, inspired by Led Zep’s third album acoustic guitar picking folkiness in mid- Wales with added mellotron, has been one of my favourite tunes of 2019 and one that I keep going back to. There’s something about it that really hits the spot in a way I can’t quite put my finger on.
Rich Ruth Calming Signals
This album from Nashville resident Rich Ruth is often described as ambient but it’s not ambient in the rain- falling- while- lying- in- bed- with- the- volume- slightly- too- low Brian Eno sense. It’s an instrumental album, nine songs that take in minimalism, repetition and drones, a beautiful soaring, squawking saxophone, built around synths and guitars. On first listen you’re never quite sure where it’s going to go next and in places it is utterly gorgeous.
Richard Fearless Deep Rave Memory
This only came out recently so I’m still getting to know it but it is a perfectly paced and sequenced, intricately constructed techno journey. Completely absorbing and in places edge- of- your- seat tense, taut techno but with some beautiful melodic passages and some pulsing, calming tracks too.
Underworld Drift Series 1 Sampler
I’ve mentioned this project and album twice recently so don’t intend to say much else. The best Underworld album for ages. Try this one…
These eighteen too, roughly in the order that they’re listed in below. A bumper year for the long player round here.
L’epee Diabolique Steve Mason About The Light A Man Called Adam Farmarama Bob Mould Sunshine Rock Private Mountain Blue Mountain Mark Peters Ambient Innerland Stiletti Ana Ab Ovo WH Lung Incidental Music Rude Audio Street Light Interference Kungens Män Chef Acid Arab Jdid Solange When I Get Home Plaid Polymers Rose City Band Rose City Band Jane Weaver Loops In The Secret Society Joe Morris Exotic Language Lana del Rey Norman Fucking Rockwell Mythologen Antisocial Background Music 2017- 2019
This was written before the result of the general election was known but in gloomy, pessimistic anticipation of a Johnson win. Maybe I was wrong and he’s been turfed out into a cold December Downing Street, the door banging shut behind him.
Music is important isn’t’ it? It brings us together, gives us shared experiences (personal listening experiences and shared ones at gigs or on the dance-floor). It gives a voice to people. It allows us to recognise ourselves in the art others have made. Music gives us something to dance to in the face of disaster and disappointment, both personal and political. Lifts us up and brings us down. Makes us laugh and smile, cry and sigh. Makes you feel like you can face the world.
A Certain Ratio have been celebrating their 40th anniversary this year with a tour and a box set and two new releases (an old one in their unreleased version of Houses In Motion and a new one in the Chris Massey remix of Dirty Boy, both featured here previously). In 1989 they were only ten years old and had left Factory for the major label environs of A&M. 1989’s The Big E album had several songs I’d consider to be keepers but didn’t sell well. The single Backs To The Wall was remixed by Frankie Knuckles, one of the originators of house music. He adds a chunky house beat and pumps up the disco elements of the song although in 1989 terms this remix feels quite slow. Nice job though, the symphonic stabs are good, there’s some funky guitar riffs and housed up piano chords, a bubbly bassline and several vocal lines that jump out given the current situation, not least the ones about the economic hard times and money talking, ‘we’re going nowhere, nowhere fast’, ‘we all need friends to help in the end but nothing lasts forever’ and the chorus…
‘Backs to the wall
Stand up tall
Don’t let ’em get you down’
A Certain Ratio have been having a new lease of life since singing to Mute with new singles, old songs excavated from the vaults, re-issues, box sets and gigs. Last year’s single Dirty Boy, featuring guest voices from the living (Barry Adamson) and the dead (Tony Wilson) has been remixed by Chris Massey, a Manchester based DJ, producer and promoter. The remix is if anything better than the original version, Jez Kerr’s bass in the foreground and a thudding house beat putting ACR back at the heart of the dancefloor. The video is a time shifting delight, intercutting footage of Manchester and it’s people from the last forty years, the Hacienda of the late 80s, dancers at a 70s discotheque, ravers at an outdoor festival, Jez and the band live on stage in ’89 and recently, the Mancunian Way then and now, our orange buses and a 60s motorcyclist speeding through the city centre- the old and the new.
On a Factory tip recently I dug out my double disc re-issue of A Certain Ratio’s Sextet, their second album, released in 1982 and their first without Hannett at the controls. Hannett was dumped as producer by New Order, Durutti Column and then ACR too which can’t have done much for his state of mind. Sextet- so called because they’d recently become a six piece band- is full of good songs, heavy noir vibes and that Mancunian funk. The song that leapt out me was Knife Slits Water, a single from the same year and on CD 2 it’s long B-side Kether Hot Knives. I’ll save the B-side for another time.
Knife Slits Water takes the group’s dark funk, particularly foregrounding Donald Johnson’s drumming, a large dollop of echo on the kick drum creating a very futuristic dance sound, some busy bass and the distant but tough vocals of Martha Tilson, lyrics she wrote about sex and sexual politics. Tony Wilson’s vision of ACR as white boys playing funk, clad in ex-army khaki with short back and sides and whistles, is perfectly realised here. In 1981 the group had done a Peel Session- Skipscada, Day One and Knife Slits Water- and that’s the version I’m posting here. They were years ahead in ’81 and still sound like that now.
The other Factory album that I was rediscovering was Section 25’s From The Hip album, a Bernard Sumner produced 1984 lost classic and it’s single Looking From A Hilltop, one of the greatest of all Factory’s releases. But again, let’s leave that for another day. The pictures above were taken in Section 25’s hometown Blackpool on Sunday afternoon, the modernist arches of the amusements centre in brilliant Fylde coast sunshine.
In their fortieth year A Certain Ratio have gone all out and are set to release an anniversary box set in May, twenty eight tracks making up the singles and B-sides that weren’t included on any of their albums and sixteen previously unreleased songs. You can read about it here. Ahead of this they have just put this out, the semi-legendary results of the time in 1980 that ACR, Martin Hannett and Grace Jones assembled in Stockport’s Strawberry Studios to record a cover version of Talking Heads’ Houses In Motion. In the end Grace never completed her vocal for the track so Jez Kerr’s guide vocals are used instead (from a period when Jez wasn’t even ACR’s singer yet). How this has managed to lie unreleased for nearly four decades is something of a mystery but now it’s here and, as they say, better late than never, the Eno- produced New York funk of Talking Heads transplanted across the Atlantic to a side street in northern England at the start of the 80s. Taut bass, monotone vocal, congas and some stunning distorted, choppy guitar playing from Martin Moscrop before those wonderful, off key horns.
The video is completely new but fits the general vibe perfectly. The song is the from the vaults find of the year so far.
Bagging Area 