Today is the last day of work in 2019 for me, the end of an extremely long feeling term. This week’s posts have been largely dominated by anger in response to the UK in 2019 so there’s a double reason for trying to end the week with some positivity and some uplift. This came out in 1992, truly a golden age for electronic dance music records, from the combined talents of Michael Hazell and Paul Hartnoll of Orbital plus Frank de Wulf on remix duties. Hazell and Hartnoll called themselves Golden Girls and the main elements of this track- Kinetic- have been re-purposed and re-used by Orbital umpteen times but never better than on this remix. From the celestial voices that open it to the insistent synth riff, the bleeps and flute/pan pipes part, this is the type of track that will have you throwing your hands in the air while blinking back tears. Optimistic, idyllic and emotive.
More instrumental, blissed out vibes for late December, this time courtesy of Cantoma (Phil Mison). Phil is a veteran of the legendary Cafe del Mar, the scene for those Mediterranean sunsets. Many say that the true Ibiza experience has been ruined by mass tourism and corporate sponsorship- they may be right- but Phil has put out several records in the last few years attempting to capture the true spirit. Firstly, in 2016 in his Cantoma guise, a beautiful album called Just Landing. Physical copies are long since sold out (although relatively pricey Japanese imports are available on eBay). It can be bought digitally at the usual places. This co-production with Danny Rampling, Claudio’s Theme, is spot on.
This year Phil put together a compilation called Out Of The Blue, a trip through a laid back and open minded record collection, which has this Frank de Wulf recording from 1992 on it, a starry-eyed, sun-going-down moment spread over seven minutes of vinyl.
Bagging Area 