Madonna’s Ray Of Light single and album are 20 years old. The album is a modern pop showpiece, borrowing from all over the place, mainly but not only dance music and dance music production, to make something new and up-to-date. The single was a blast, a riot of acid-tinged electronics merged with a soaring chorus and a feeling of freedom, flying, re-birth. Madonna had been through several life changing experiences in the previous couple of years, not least the birth of her daughter, and a desire to capture this newness, ‘wonderment’ she called it, was uppermost in her mind. The person chosen to bring it to life was William Orbit and he brings the sound, the electronic and dance influences and the production techniques. Ray Of Light, the single, still sounds fresh today. Orbit deliberately pushed her vocals as far as he could, making her sing just beyond the top of her range, a semitone above where she’d usually peak, to get that reaching and slightly straining effect. I was deep into stuff in 1998 that was often quite a long way from Madonna but I loved this single- and still do.
The 12″ and cd single came with a range of remixes. William Orbit’s own 8 minute Liquid version of Ray Of Light was well worth the cost of a cd single (£3.99 probably), a stretched out, less hyper take on the pop version, with looped electric guitar parts for the intro and then burbling synths and bass, the vocal covered in reverb.
I may come back to the Ray Of Light album at a later date- I haven’t listened to it for a long time but it’s got a lot of songs worth re-investigating. While putting this post together I cam across this semi-ambient, floaty remix of Drowned World with a great backwards guitar part, again by Orbit himself- Drowned World- A Reverie Remix. Rather beautiful.
Punk bonus- Mark Vidler, as Go Home Productions, was a master of the 00s mash-up/bootleg scene. He spliced Ray Of Light with Pretty Vacant, added the filth and fury of the Pistols on Bill Grundy and some gig chatter of Lydon complaining about being spat upon.
In 1994 Kylie went for some credibility- not that she needed it, everyone loved Kylie anyway- but she was fed up with feeling like a puppet in the SAW production line. Brothers In Rhythm were on board to provide some dance productions skills and she had signed to DeConstruction (then a pretty hip dance label). Confide In Me is a slow burner, opening with violin and piano. Sweeping Arabian strings and a didgeridoo join in with the indie-dance drums. Kylie does her thing.
I’ve posted this before but it’s worth a repost while I’m in Kylie territory, a Go Home Productions mash up of Kylie’s Slow and The Stone Roses’ Beggin’ You. Slow is a great, sultry pop song and was co-written by Emiliana Torrini, an Icelandic singer who has graced these pages before. It looks like The Stone Roses have called it a day again- the poor reception given to the two singles and Ian’s frustration with the others not wanting to do much work is one reason that was whispered about. Another is the ever present tension between Ian and Reni. To be frank, after the Etihad shows it looked done to me anyway. This mash up is good fun.
Ok, let’s do this. The internet consensus is that the new Stone Roses single, All For One, is dreadful and that includes the opinions of people I know whose taste counts for something in my eyes. The problems, in no particular order, are a) the lyrics b) the tune c) the guitar playing d) the drumming and (lack of) bass and e) the written for the football stadium nature of it. It arrived like Roses things do with a sense of event, fanfare and expectation. It was the first time I’ve listened to Radio 1 for I don’t know how long. They’re on a hiding to nothing really, the weight of expectation, the gap, the silence since the re-union gigs, all mean that almost whatever they put out would be not enough.
But still, a) the lyrics- yes, dreadful, completely. The Dogtanian theme tune. If they’re an attempt at an early 90s positivity, power-to-the-people style vibe, they’ve missed the mark. The buckets of reverb on Ian’s multi-tracked vocals don’t distract from the fact that these are unfinished, half thoughts that needed to be reworked. b) the tune- I don’t mind it, it’s sticks. There’s something lurking in there. I’ve been trying to like it. c) Squire’s guitar playing is the highlight for me, and pretty restrained by Second Coming standards. The comparisons to Beady Eye and The Seahorses are a tad unfair- the riff, breakdown and re-entry at two minutes thirty something and solo are pretty good to these ears. d) The drumming- it does seem to lack Reni’s trademark fluidity, thumping away in a Ringo manner. The bass is submerged beneath everything else. e) It’s undoubtedly been written with football stadia in mind, all together now, sun going down, ‘in harmony, all one family’ as Ian sings, beery blokes with shaggy haircuts hugging and spilling their lager. Which is a shame- if they’ve started writing for their perceived audience then they have got a problem. Because if you take the feedback fade in, the riff, the solo, the phased sections and remix them, pull the FX forward and drop the words further back, make it more experimental and psychedelic, rather than something to be bawled back at you by 75, 000 people, then you’ve got something that picks up where they left off at some point two and a half decades ago. Not a single maybe but a song. And this is the real issue with it- it does sound, as people have said, like a song from a mid-90s Britpop compilation rather than the headspinning, sweet rush of the psyche-pop Roses of Don’t Stop or Elephant Stone or the fluid dance influenced Roses of Fool’s Gold or Begging You or the lighter than air Roses of Waterfall or This Is The One. They’ve mistaken muscle for swagger, volume for presence.
Their recorded legacy (such as it is and they’re in danger of pissing it away) rests on the eleven songs on the debut lp, the Elephant Stone and Sally Cinnamon singles, a clutch of B-sides from the album sessions (Standing Here, Going Down, Mersey Paradise, Where Angels Play) and the shimmering, mutant funk of Fool’s Gold. What they had in ’89 was a sound that managed to be progressive- it was 60s influenced but it was moving forward. Those songs weren’t written and recorded to be played in stadia- they were just written and recorded. They’ve become a stadium band since then- even in 1995 they were playing halls like the Apollo not arenas. If All For One was written in a shared flat in Chorlton and performed at a polytechnic student union building with a low stage and ceiling it would be a totally different song. The massiveness of those gigs three years ago and the groups growing reputation with the now grown up children of the original fans has totally altered their approach- on the basis of this song. There’s a chance that the album may be better, more nuanced and varied. The other problem here is that the music All For One harks back to is a debased currency- mid 90s, Dadrock. No one wants that- except I suppose a large proportion of the 150, 000 people who bought tickets for the shows this summer. I think they need to show that they’ve moved on, that the progressive nature that led them from Sally Cinnamon to Fool’s Gold is still there and that the lightness of touch they had that characterises their best songs is not lost. Instead they’re aiming for back row, half a mile form the stage
For the record then, and I reserve the right to change my mind whenever I feel like it- I don’t think All For One is dreadful. But it’s not great either. It’s alright- I can almost quite like it. But if it wasn’t them, I wouldn’t listen to it more than once. Yet here we are, loads of us, talking about it.
Two further things- in the summer of 1990 we waited ages for the new Roses single. It was delayed, the cover art had to be redone, the release date kept changing. Then it came out, One Love, the follow up to Fool’s Gold, a band at the peak of their powers and the height of their notoriety, and …. it was a bit of a let down. A decent tune, a shuffly drumbeat, early 90s positivity and power-to-the-people lyrics, but falling short. That was the moment their forward momentum stalled. John Squire said later he didn’t like the song, that it felt like they were selling something for someone. Sound familiar?
I’ve written about The Second Coming before, a flawed, overcooked, guitar rock album with a handful of genuine thrills. I’ve long thought that if you could get hold of the mastertapes and had the technical skills, you could make a really interesting version- a long, drawn out twenty or twenty-five minute single track, an Orb style excursion, an Amorphous Androgynous psychedelic mix. Take the ambient, club influenced intro to Breaking Into Heaven and it’s burst into menace, the shimmering shards of Ten Storey Love Song, fade into and out of the campfire acoustic guitars of Tightrope and the wide eyed Your Star Will Shine, drop the vox in and out dub stylee, break down into Mani’s bass and Reni’s drums from Daybreak or Straight To The Man and then build up into Begging You. That, in my head, is where Don’t Stop, Waterfall, Shoot You Down, the backwards tapes experiments of some of those early B-sides, Fool’s Gold and Something’s Burning were heading. A headtrip. And that’s what All For One and whatever comes next should be.
How on earth have I got this much text out of three minutes thirty seven seconds of disappointment? Come on chaps, dig a little deeper and give us a little bit of something else.
And as a final thing, a few weeks back I saw this and it makes me smile…
Mark Vidler, in his Go Home Productions guise, proves that a mash up of Shannon’s peerless Let The Music Play and The Stones’ equally peerless Gimme Shelter go together as well as bacon and eggs on a Saturday morning. Jim Morrison turns up at the start to provide the fried tomato (liked by some, loathed by others). Stoned. Immaculate. Fried mushrooms.
I know mash-ups are dreadfully passe but I keep rediscovering ones in my d/l folder that I like- like this one where Go Home Productions does a very good job of mashing Metal Box-era PiL with Britney Spears.
The picture shows Yves Tanguy, French surrealist painter, shot by Man Ray, another oddly contemporary looking portrait. He wouldn’t look out of place in PiL either.
I woke up this morning with Echo And The Bunnymen’s The Game playing in my head- not sure why, maybe it’s September becoming October and that stuff in The Game about changing seasons and everybody having their own good reason why their favourite season is their favourite season. Maybe not.
I’ve just realised I don’t have The Game on the hard drive, so it’ll have to wait until later in the week. In the meantime, here’s a crackers remix of Thorn Of Crowns. Go Home Productions Mark Vidler has produced many wonderful mash-ups, including Ray Of Gob and How Soon Is Independance, both featured previously at Bagging Area. This isn’t a mash up. It’s Thorn Of Crowns (possibly my least favourite track from Ocean Rain ‘the greatest album ever made’, the one where McCulloch goes ‘c c c cucumber, c c c cauliflower, c c c cabbage’) remixed with an in-yer-face electronic backing. The band apparently loved it. I imagine Bunnymen purists will hate it. I’m somewhere in between. See what you think.
I love these little internet coincidences. Earlier today I posted Can’s I Want More, mentioning it’s influence on Johnny Marr writing How Soon Is Now. Idly surfing a while ago I came across this, Go Home Productions mash up of The Smiths’ masterpiece How Soon Is Now and Destiny’s Child’s Independent Woman. These two songs go together far better than you’d expect, in fact the fit is hand in glove. Ha. Incidentally get over to gohomeproductions.co.uk for a whole load of other mash up fun. Mark Vidler, GHP, has been at this for years, most famously producing the ace Sex Pistols v Madonna Ray Of Gob (which I can’t find my mp3 of, can’t believe I deleted it). This one may be his best yet though, a beauty.
Bagging Area 