Lone Swordsman

Daniel Avery has a new record out in October, an intense and affecting techno/ ambient album produced in lockdown. Ahead of it he has just released this, a tribute to his friend and mentor Andrew Weatherall called Lone Swordsman…

Daniel said “I was in my studio the morning I heard about Andrew Weatherall’s passing. The track Lone Swordsman is what formed that day. Andrew was a hero, a friend and someone who regularly reminded us all how it should be done, not to mention the funniest fucker around. Proceeds from this record will be donated to Amnesty International in his memory. Thank you for everything.”

It is a moving and heartfelt piece of machine music, long waves of synth and a drumbeat with a rising and falling bleepy melody riding on top. The only drawback is that it is too short- it could happily be double the length.

Love + Light

Daniel Avery released a new album suddenly last week which makes it two albums this year following his collaboration with Alessandro Cortini that came out in March just as lockdown kicked in. The new one, Love + Light, has been worked on through lockdown so it’s at least in part a response to the situation. It’s also an emotional call to what we’ve lost- coming together- and a eulogy of kinds to nights lost dancing in basements. The second half (what will be side two of the vinyl release (out in September) features some of those absorbing, intense, emotive, ghostly ambient drones that make this record a clear successor to Illusion Of Time and 2018’s Song For Alpha. The first half has pulsing synths, kick drums, euphoric bleeps and acid squiggles, the sounds of the dance floor, dry ice and strobe. It’s a complete piece of work that draws you in and carries you along. Opener London Island is gentle but insistent, waves of sound building for five minutes. As it ends there’s a slight pause, a moment of stillness, before the sudden, heart-stopping arrival of the bass drum and a siren kick in, second song Dusting For Smoke. Tension and release. Even though I now know it’s coming, it gets me every time- and I love it.

Isolation Mix One

‘Don’t create congestion in commonly used space’, a poster from the Soviet Union, 1950s.

I thought I’d do something new today and maybe make it a regular feature. Everyone and their dog is transmitting DJ sets at the moment. One thing we’ve all got lots of is time. So in the moments between phoning in to long video conferences, teaching online lessons, wiling away hours absentmindedly surfing the internet and social media, spending time with my family and getting my state sanctioned daily exercise allowance I’ve also put together the first Bagging Area mix, fifty four minutes of music that I’ve called Isolation Mix 1.

It’s actually Isolation Mix 1.1, the first one wasn’t quite right and I removed a couple of tracks and replaced them with some other ones. It’s a mix of old and new, largely ambient and instrumental, a bit of dub and dub techno in there and appearances from Rutger Hauer and a retired French footballer.

Daniel Avery and Alessandro Cortini: Illusion of Time v Eric Cantona ‘As Flies To Wanton Boys…’
Four Tet: Teenage Birdsong
Durutti Column: The Second Aspect Of The Same Thing
Richard Norris: Shorelines
Sabres Of Paradise: Jacob Street 7am
A Winged Victory For The Sullen: Keep It Dark, Deutschland
Vangelis: Tears In Rain
The Orb: The Weekend It Rained Forever (Oseberg Buddha Mix (The Ravens Have Left The Tower))
Dub Trees: King Of The Faeries (Avengers Outer Space Chug Dub)
Two Lone Swordsmen: As Worldly Pleasures Waves Goodbye…

Enter Exit

Picking up where yesterday’s Youth remix of Manika Kaur left off and heading into a world of drones comes the second trailer from the forthcoming Daniel Avery and Alessandro Cortini album Illusion Of Time. Spectral noises, ambient buzz, dischord, layers of sound with some feedback on top, both unsettling and rather beautiful. I suspect played loud on a proper system this is going to sound huge.

Illusion Of Time

This was put up online yesterday, a new release from Daniel Avery and Alessandro Cortini. This is so far up my street, so hitting the sweet spot of where my listening habits are at the moment that when I clicked play I couldn’t imagine how it could be any better, any more exactly right. A keyboard part, looped and with just enough reverb on it, altering slightly, a piano playing some bass notes, and some variation in the keyboard riff before it settles back where it began, over waves of static growing and fading in intensity. Four minutes seventeen of meditative, transporting ebb and flow.

 

 

Monday’s Long Song

Daniel Avery’s Falling Light, twenty two minutes of sounds as part of an audio/visual installation for Leeds International Festival, has recently been made available as a freebie. You can get it by signing up to the mailing list here. Opening with a piano heavily drenched in reverb and then noise, drone, haze and static before eventually being replaced techno drums and rising synth chords.

 

Days From Now

Daniel Avery’s ambient techno masterpiece album Song For Alpha from last year was joined this week by a sister album Song for Alpha 2 compiling B-sides from the various 12″ releases and fourteen remixes. The remixes by Jon Hopkins, Four Tet and Inga Mauer have already graced the pages of this blog- here’s another to join them from Death In Vegas head honcho Richard Fearless, an intense white light ride, nuanced acid techno. The whole package is available here.

 

Monday’s Long Song

Sometimes things just come together really nicely. I had something else planned for today’s long song but then Twitter throws this photo up and one thing leads to another and we have Neu! instead. Krautrock against Brexit!

Fuer Immer

I originally wrote a long post here about the ongoing Brexit disaster but then deleted it- does anyone need any more opinions right now? Then I remembered Daniel Avery’s ambient/techno track from last year, a track named after the label our Prime Minster (at the time of writing) gave to nearly half the population a couple of years ago back. On Wednesday night Theresa May claimed on live TV that she’s on ‘our side’ and that actually parliament is to blame. Nice bit of anti-democratic demagoguery there. Thankfully, in a world increasingly full of right wing demagogues and populists, our own version is a shit populist, completely lacking the common touch and with little actual popular support.

Opal Shadow Glitter

This time last year two records were released, one of which I missed out from my end of 2018 list which shocks and appals me as it is a stunning piece of work. It is this one, Four Tet’s remix of Bicep’s Opal, an eight minute beauty built around a stuttering riff, bells and happy-sad synths. There wasn’t much that came out last year that topped this.

I also re-found this, a track from Daniel Avery’s Projector e.p., also out in March last year following his Song For Alpha album. There’s a new album out in April, Song For Alpha 2, that pulls together all the remixes and e.p. tracks plus nine new ones (from the hundred or so he recorded that he then created the original album from). The one which grabbed me again recently is Shadow Mountain, a slow moving late night thing with waves, reverb and a snare but which turns towards the strobe part way through and becomes seriously intense.

One of the remixes included in Song For Alpha 2 is Jon Hopkins rework of Glitter. This is a monster, centred on a massive rattling, brooding kick drum and tension that builds in waves around it. At about three minutes Hopkins starts to drip some repeating melodies in that dance around like moths circling a naked flame. Everything drops away five minutes twenty, the kick resurfaces, and then after a few seconds explodes in a burst of light and colour. Magic.

Magnetic

I pulled this out at the weekend- a collaboration between Daniel Avery and Justin Robertson, in his Deadstock 33s guise, together on a 12″ single that came out on Optimo back in 2012. The four track e.p. was kicked off by Magnetic, a kraut-disco jam with a Hooky-esque bassline that still hits the spot in 2019. Music to eat up the miles on the autobahn.

Magnetic