Isolation Mix Eeleven

This week’s mix is made up entirely of songs released during lockdown, since mid- March 2020. Some of them have been written and recorded during this period. I could easily have doubled the length of this so maybe I’ll come back to this and do a part two. This one has the trippy psyche of Sonic Boom, dusty funk desert blues from Ess O Ess, some dubby jazz (or jazzy dub) courtesy of Jah Wobble, Number’s post- punk dance stance, yet more excellence from Weatherall and Walsh’s Woodleigh Research Facility, Justin Robertson and Sofia Hedblom’s blend of Nigerian rhythms and electronic dub, Dan Wainwright’s pagan chug and some Balearic bliss from Joe Morris, Rich Lane, The Long Champs and a cover by Rheinzand. There’s one segue which is a bit of a mess but it’ll have to do. Life has surface noise and all that.

Sonic Boom: Just Imagine
Ess O Ess and Saul Richards: Totem (Swamp Crawl)

Jah Wobble: Lockdown 5 (Forbearance)

Number: Red Flag

Woodleigh Research Facility: Karra Mesh

Formerlover: Correction Dub

Dan Wainwright: A Blessing

Joe Morris: The New Dawn Will Come

Rich Lane: Barry Island (The Long Champs Dub)

Rheinzand: All By Myself

Barry Island

This is new from Rich Lane, Newcastle under Lyne’s Balearic chug overlord, and it’s a beauty. Laid back and easy going, slinky and filmic in scope, it hits the spot from the moment those synths fade in at the start and the windwood brings the melody.

A friend on Facebook said it sounds like driving down the Amalfi coast in a convertible, wind in the hair, sunglasses on, sun dipping in the sky, the tide coming in, the evening ahead of you. It’s all those things. And even though all those things are imaginary at the moment the music makes them almost close enough to touch. There are two top class remixes, the Long Champs dub is lovely, an unwinding and stripped down take on the original while Duncan Gray Ambient Mix is gorgeous, opening with the sound of the tide coming in and some synth bleeps before the strings take over. Buy all three for £1.50.

Indian Summer

This mix from Rich Lane is the perfect way to spend two and a half hours today, a midweek pick-me- up, lots of chuggy end of summer tunes, some head nodders, beard strokers and foot tappers. There’s a possibility that some warm, even hot, weather is on it’s way, thanks to those Saharan heat plumes.

Prequels – Rich Lane / (Cotton Bud)
9:AM (Rich Lane Remix) – Did Virgo feat. Johanna / (La dame Noir)
Araf – The Long Champs / (tici taci)
Irusu – Thoughtless / (Reinhardt)
Penumbras (Noche Remix) – Utopyk & El Fulminandor / (Fulmen)
The Science of Plants (Peza Remix) – Kieren Holden / (tici taci)
Trapped (feat. Snem K) – Duncan Gray / (tici taci)
Sleepstream (Ewan Pearson Remix) – Languages / (Days of Being Wild)
Dumb It Down – Rich Lane / (Cotton Bud)
La Nuit Des Tropiques (Field Of Dreams Remix) – Les Crocodiles / (Pleasure Unit)
Duncan Gray – Long Haul / (tici taci)
Jack Butters – Rotten Road / (tici taci)
The Long Champs – A Postcard / (tici taci)
Just Want to Touch (Cabaret Nocturne Remix) – Two Mamarrachos / (Nein)
Touched By The Hand of Cicciolina (Rich Lane Cotton Dub) – Pop Will Eat Itself / (unofficial remix)
Toucan (Mr BC Remix) – Quantal / (Sub:Sonic)
Power To The People (Markus Gibb Remix) – Pardon Moi / (Roam)
Imani’s Dress (Original Mix) – Satori / (Crosstown Rebels)
Around Me (Rich Lane Cotton Dub) – ONUKA / (unnoficial remix)
Erotica Nervosa (feat. Sarah Rebecca) – Duncan Gray / (tici taci)
Plague Of The Zombies – Scientist / (Greensleeves)
City of Culture – Rich Lane / (Cotton Bud)
Tecno Misógino (Bufi Remix) – Moderna Y Theus Mago / (La dame Noir)
Gorian Dray (MontCosmik Remix) – Monoblock & PLSKTR / (Play Pal)
Subtractive Ocean – Dark Strands / (From the forthcoming album ‘Lights Out’)

Much Much Worse Where Clock Goes

This pair of chuggy, leftfield dancefloor monsters could have been posted on any given Monday in the Long Song slot, both being towards the ten minute mark. Both are from Duncan Gray with some sonic tweaking from Rich Lane in the mastering process. Both are getting frequent plays round here.

Much Much Worse is a stomper with  a massive hoover bass sound, a little clipped and funky guitar part and a flipped out synth topline that dances about all over the place, growing increasingly intense.

Where Clock Goes (long version) is a slow burning, dark disco number with wobbly bass, tsk tsk tsk hi-hats, and synth riffs that builds more and more and more, the whole thing then shifting several times during it’s nine minutes thirty seconds running time. This could be twice as long and it wouldn’t get boring.

A pound each at Bandcamp.

Low Frequency Dub

Rich Lane has done this cover of LFO’s mighty 1990 bleep ‘n’ bass track LFO, the 12″ that showed British techno was something special and able to stand on its own two feet, with its own character and feel that stood apart from Detroit. Rather than just re-edit it or use samples Rich has rebuilt it from scratch, keeping the original’s power and mystery but giving it a nudge into late 2018. The bassline alone is enough to improve my mood.

Rude Redux

Rude Audio,a South London collective, have an e.p. out shortly. The five tracks on Rude Redux have been providing the soundtrack to my autumn commute on and off for the last few weeks. The trio take the open minded, anything goes, Balearic spirit of the late 80s/early 90s as their starting point and layer North African and Middle Eastern melodies over the top of their chuggy, dancefloor rhythms, dubby basslines bouncing about. In places woozy and light, in others more direct and 4/4. The opening track is this one, a shuffler with timbales borrowed from Sabres of Paradise, a nagging keyboard riff and a title that points the way…

You can buy it at Bandcamp (and get the rest of the e.p. when it comes out next week).

To The Half Moon combines chanting and Kraftwerk and glides off from there in an ambient house direction.

Two more tracks, Rumble On Arab St and Pipeline Screaming, flesh the sound out further before we get to the Rich Lane remix at the end. Rich has been mining gold recently with his remixes. Here he finds some additional space, adds a pulsing heartbeat rhythm and lets the synths do their thing…

A Sucker For Symmetry

A new chuggy, synth, disco track from Rich Lane’s Cotton Bud label came out last Friday. A Sucker For Symmetry comes in both vocal and dub versions, with slinky grooves, early 80s style vox and some New Order-esque guitar lines here and there. Get it at Bandcamp. There’s a video too here with plenty of  symmetry, opening with a shot of Salford Quays and then heading out into the world from there with pictures from Rich’s travels on his scooter.

Prequels

I don’t know about prequels- the three Star Wars prequels are the biggest waste of celluloid time I can of. Clones. Tax dispute. Jar Jar Binks. Overactive and unconvincing CGI. Ewan McGregor’s accent. Yawn.

Rich Lane and his Cotton Dubs on the other hand are always worth keeping an eye on. In the middle of August he released a three track ep featuring Prequels and City of Culture. Prequels is a slow motion, chug affair with a robot voice. It is not a million miles from the Code 61 Belgian New Beat track I posted recently. City Of Culture is top quality electronic dub reggae. The current City of Culture is Hull- I don’t know if this is a tribute to Hull or not (Rich is from Wolverhampton which has never been City of Culture). The third track is a dub of the Prequels. You can buy all three for a measly £2.50 from Bandcamp.

Touched By The Hand Of…

…Cicciolina, Cicciolina.

In May 1990 Pop Will Eat Itself released a single just ahead of the Italia 90 World Cup. PWEI intended it as an alternative World Cup theme and let’s face it, given how corrupt FIFA is/was, no one would really have batted an eyelid at a dance single by a West Midlands grebo band fronted by an Italian porn star turned politician. Plus, as a song, it’s massively good fun. House pianos. Dub bassline. Horns. Fans chanting. Commentary.

Touched By The Hand Of Cicciolina (Extra Time Mix)

Rich Lane has recently done a Cotton Dub re-edit of it, updating it for 2017 in fine style. No download unfortunately but again, massively good fun.

Dumb It Down

Like Drew I’ve been listening to the Mary Chain mostly this week, working my way through the studio albums in the car to and from work and getting to know Damage And Loss at home. So Saturday, April 1st (no Fools stuff here I’m afraid), first day off work for two weeks, something different and brand new for the blog to go with the return of Bruce Pennington’s kitchy sci-fi 70s artworks.

This is the latest from Rich Lane, a chuggy piece of machine music for dancers and headnodders alike. Even better than the original mix of Dumb It Down is the Jack Butters remix (click the Next symbol on the player), music from a dark machine, a twangy guitar in there too and the robotic vocal of Alien Sofa. Buy both from Bandcamp for £1.80 and Rich, Jack and Alien will put it towards the cost of a pint in a Wetherspoons somewhere.