Monday’s Long Song

The GLOK remix album, Dissident Remixed, continues to reveal it’s pleasures slowly. Every remix, all eleven of them, is a new and worthwhile take on the original. I’ve already written before about the ones by Andrew Weatherall, Richard Sen and Timothy Clerkin and the Leaf edit that came out last year too. The one that has been guiding me and my car to and from work recently, eating up the miles between home and the potential Covid storage facility/ school where I work is Andy Bell’s own extended version of Pulsing. In it’s original form it was nine minutes long. Andy stretches it out for another six, taking it to the full quarter of an hour, the krauty bassline pumping, a cosmic piano part dropping in and out, various guitars squalling about and synth sounds opening up. It ebbs and flows, parts appearing and re- appearing.  At nine minutes the bassline throbs back in for the closing section, the snare drum rattling away, the build up lasting for well over a minute, the keening synth sounds increasingly intense- very cosmische and very good indeed. Buy it at Bandcamp.

 

 

Dissident Again

Glok’s Dissident album was one of my favourites of last year. It has just been joined by a companion album, eleven remixes of songs from the original. One of them, the Leaf edit, came out last year but the rest are all new and of a very high standard. It occurred to me when the vinyl arrived that this will be one of the last times a new track is released bearing the words Andrew Weatherall Remix in brackets after it. Andrew’s remix of Cloud Cover is a slowed down, chilly, electronic groove, ghostly synths and deep bass and a rattling snare drum, the sound of high rises and underpasses.

There’s plenty else to get into across the double vinyl/ eleven digital songs. Andy Bell’s own fifteen minute remix of Pulsing is a joy, quarter of an hour of ambient/ shoegaze crossover. The Minotaur Shock Remix of Weaver and C.A.R. remix of the same song take the same source material and end up in very different places with it. Timothy Clerkin’s new version of Projected Sounds is a stunner, an intense acid crawl with trippy backing vocals and buzzsaw synths.

Richard Sen’s eight minute remix of the title track opens the album, a dark, heavy groove with guitars and spaced out sounds bouncing around, the wah wah riff dropping in and out, skyscraping solo notes and a juddering bass riff, a remix designed for soundsystems in the woods long after dark.

Love Comes In Waves

Something else new today, the latest in a seemingly endless flow of new music. Lovely, rippling, hazy psychedelic guitar music, ideal for the dog days of summer, arriving in the form of a solo album from Andy Bell (Ride and Glok Andy Bell not the Erasure Andy Bell). Love Comes In Waves is the sort of song that used to be delivered on a weekly basis in the late 80s and early 90s. Dreamy, driving, shimmering, indie- rock, all fringes, guitar pedals, love beads and suede jackets.

In contrast I wrote a post about Kylie (Minogue not Kardashian but I hope that goes without saying) for The Vinyl Villain, an addition to his long running ICA series. Ten songs plus four bonus tracks. It was posted yesterday. You can read it here.

Isolation Mix 9- Weatherdub

It’s difficult to know where we are with isolation any more. Many people seem to be acting like it’s all over, parks are full of groups of people and social distancing is a thing of last month. The daily death toll doesn’t seem to be diminishing that much and in the north west we currently have the highest regional infection and death rate in the country. As the government brings about the end of lockdown in favour of the economy and to distract from the horrors of their mismanagement of the entire period, some people I’m sure will stay in and stay distanced. In our household we are shielding so our lives will carry on as before for the moment. God only knows where we go from here.

Isolation Mix 9 came partly from a comment I made at The Flightpath Estate, an Andrew Weatherall Facebook group where I promised a Weatherdub mix, and partly from Isolation Mix 6 three weeks ago, an hour of dub that had several of Lord Sabre’s fingerprints on it. There’s some crossover between that mix and this one but I chose the other Steve Mason remix and dropped the Sabres Of Paradise dub of Regret by New Order just for variety’s sake. This mix, an hour and a quarter of dub business from Andrew Weatherall as a solo artist, aided and abetted by Nina Walsh, as a remixer, as a Sabre Of Paradise and as an Asphodell, spans thirty years taking in songs from 1990 and 2020. There’s loads more that could have gone in but I thought I’d keep it compact.

Sabres Of Paradise: Ysaebud (From The Vaults)

Sabres Of Paradise: Return of Carter

Steve Mason: Boys Outside (Andrew Weatherall Dub 1)

Andrew Weatherall: Unknown Plunderer

Saint Etienne: Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Andrew Weatherall Mix)

Sabres Of Paradise: Edge 6

Andrew Weatherall: End Times Sound

Meatraffle: Meatraffle On The Moon (Andrew Weatherall Dub)

Richard Sen: Songs Of Pressure (The Asphodells Remix)

Andrew Weatherall: Kiyadub 45

Lark: Can I Colour In Your Hair? (Andrew Weatherall Version)

Planet 4 Folk Quartet: Message To Crommie

Solitary Kolokol

One of my favourite albums of last year was GLOK’s Dissident, Andy Bell’s synth- led cosmische trip outside Ride, taking in ambient soundscapes, atmospheric waves of sound, throbbing bass and a touch of acid. One of the highlights of the album was Kolokol which has now been remixed by London- based French producer Franz Kirmann, who takes the Balearic bliss of the original and refashions it into something that could have been made by Orbital in their halcyon days first time around. You can buy it at Bandcamp for one British quid.

By way of return Andy Bell has taken one of Franz Kirmann’s tracks from his album Madrapour (not heard it yet but will do and report back). The GLOK remix of Solitary is a ten minute exercise in post club comedown, little whirring, circling melodies and hissing noises, long washes of synth, building layers of sounds. Suddenly there’s a breakdown at four minutes where it becomes a bit of a techno banger before then dissolving into something more abstract again- melancholic, expansive and outward looking. This will also set you back a mere single British pound. Eighteen minutes of music for less than the price of half a pint of beer.

Unknown Plunderer

At the risk of repeating myself, here’s a new from Andrew Weatherall, a fired up, slo- mo dubbed out excursion. This is one from an e.p. out on Byrd Out next month along with another track called End Times Sound and a pair of remixes. Unknown Plunderer, the latest fruit from his writing and recording partnership with Nina Walsh, has Andy Bell laying down guitar lines over the top, clipped riffs ricocheting about over cavernous bass. Tasty stuff.

Plastic Bag

Andy Bell, guitarist in Ride, is on a creative streak. Not only have Ride put out a new album this year and Andy released his dreamy, cosmic GLOK album but he’s now put out a 7″ single under his own name as well. Plastic Bag is four minutes of introspection and beauty- some ambient noise, Eno-esque piano, slowly drifting, delicate vocals and a guitar line carried in from over yonder. Sounds like it could play over the end credits of a film as the road and the hills recede into the distance and the screen fades to black. Magical.

The single is only available as part of a singles subscription club through Sonic Cathedral. £100 gets you a series of limited singles released between February and December this year. It’s here. All depends on how flush you’re feeling.

Dissident

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.

Monday’s Long Song

This is rather gorgeous and at just under nine minutes pretty long too- banks of cosmische synths, waves of warm sounds, insistent drums. It’s by GLOK and called Pulsing, appropriately.

There’s a very limited edition cassette of a seven track album already sold out but fear not, the album is out digitally in early July and opens with a twenty minute epic called Dissident. GLOK, it turns out, is Andy Bell, the guitarist from Ride (who also have an album out later this year).  This is by some distance the best thing that any former member of Oasis has been involved in.

Making Friends With The Invader

I was mucking about with the effects and filters on my phone’s camera and managed to do this to the picture I took of the forum at Pompeii. I was quite pleased with it- it looks a bit like a place where Captain James T. Kirk would fight a rubber alien and then meet a girl and explain to her that ‘on earth we call this kissing’.

Andrew Weatherall, mentioned once or twice in these parts recently, has a new e.p. out at the end of the month on the Byrd Out label titled Blue Bullet. It includes this mighty and exploratory dub influenced excursion featuring none other than Andy Bell (of Ride) on guitar. Apparently he’d popped into the studio where Weatherall and Nina Walsh were at work to try out a Les Paul that was for sale and was then asked to contribute to the track. The results are out of this world.