An Hour Of Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown And Downtown

Hardway Bros (Sean Johnston) and Monkton (Duncan Gray) DJ and remix together. In both cases there’s something about the partnership that pushes both to do something that’s different from what each does on their own. Their remixes as Hardway Bros Meets Monkton reference the seminal Augustus Pablo album King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown and as a result you’d be right to expect lots of dub percolating through the sounds cooked up in the remix studio. Dub, bass, echo, melodica- all are present. So is plenty of glorious chug and the wide spaces of cosmic disco. Cosmic, psychedelic, dub disco. The remixes also tend to be long, usually going up towards ten minutes, so this mix was always going to be a long one. 

An Hour of Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown And Downtown

• Jack Butters: Shake It Off (Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown Version)
• Electric Blue Vision: Other Skies (Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown Version)
• Perry Granville: Sailing Ships (Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown Version)
• Fjordfunk: It’s All Black (Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown)
• GLOK: That Time Of Night (Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown Dub)
• Psychederek: Screamadereka (Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown Downtown Remix)
• Phil Kieran and Green Velvet: Enjoy The Day (Hardway Meets Monkton Downtown Remix)

Jack Butters is from Stoke- on- Trent, a city fmaous for consisting of five towns, its historic past as the centre of pottery and ceramics, and for it’s football team Stoke City (the old ground, the Victoria Ground, was a fairly fearsome awayday in the past). What Stoke should be famous for now is Jack’s music, not least this dubbed out Hardway and Monkton remix. I heard this played by Sean at ALFOS at The Golden Lion last summer and it sounded immense.

Electric Blue Vision is Jesse Fahnestock of 10:40 and Jezebell with singer Emilia Harmony. Other Skies came out last November, a 2023 highlight with three great remixes- this one plus remixes by Tambores En Benirras and Balearic Ultras. Sean and Duncan’s remix is more majestic melodica led dub, a complete reconstruction of Jesse and Emilia’s song.

Perry Granville’s Sailing Ships becomes a metallic- dub- by- way- of- post punk- and- acid house trip in the Hardway Bros and Monkton hands, noises rattling round and ricocheting as the bass pushes on and thunder rumbles. There are stuttering vocal sample and pulverising synths, drop outs and re- entries and always underpinning everything, huge, live sounding bass. 

Fjordfunk released It’s All Back in 2020 on the Tici Taci label, an eleven minute cosmic disco tune remixed into an eleven minute cosmische dub disco tune by Hardway and Monkton with a squealing guitar line dropping in and out and an ultra- distorted voice saying things that are impossible to make out. 

GLOK is Ride’s Andy Bell. Since 2019 Andy’s released several albums and singles as GLOK, experimental cosmische/ synth songs and tracks. That Time Of Night was on 2021’s Pattern Recognition and features the voice of Shiarra Bell, Andy’s wife, talking about the pleasures of being lost on a dancefloor, ‘just one person, one part of the whole mass of people.. the heat and the light and the flashing…’. Hardway and Monkton take the track and turn it into a sleek, propulsive, krauty trip, a keening guitar line running through it with a booming, metronomic kick drum.

Psychederek is from Stretford, just up the road from me, and has recently released one of this year’s best EPs, Alt!. In August 2021 he released the Space Arcade 12″ on Chris Massey’s Sprechen label, with the very ace Screamadereka coming in double Hardway Monkton remix form- the Downtown remix and Disco Dub version. The Downtown Remix is a glorious sunlit thing in two halves, the first half dubby psyche and the second a chuggy, pacier, cosmische glide. 

Phil Kieran and Green Velvet’s Enjoy The Day came out in late 2022. Phil is a Belfast based DJ and producer. Green Velvet is from Chicago. Enjoy The Day is full on, four four drums and techno bass, chopped up and FXed vocals, ‘you got it’, and a piano line that is the definition of happy/ sad. 

Trance Stance

Electric Blue Vision released one of late 2023’s best EPs, Jesse Fahnestock and Emilia Harmony’s genre blurring widescreen Balearic psyche- folk/ indie dance track Other Skies. It came with three remixes that pushed it into other spaces, courtesy of Balearic Ultras, Tambores En Benniras and Hardway Bros Meets Monkton Uptown. If you haven’t got it, get it here. The debut Electric Blue Vision track was a self titled electronic swoon with Emilia’s celestial vocals floating by and if you haven’t got that one you should get that too here.  

Now, today, comes the latest Electric Blue Vision release, out on Electric Wardrobe Records. Trance Stance was inspired by Emilia’s outline for a song, one about the thrill of seeking someone out across a crowded dancefloor, the excitement of, ‘waiting all night long just to rock your body down’. The music is a slow burning groove, chugging drums and bass, swampy guitars and some bleeps and bloops. Jesse made a connection with Emilia’s lyrics to Joan Jett And The Blackhearts 1981 smash single I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll, Jesse’s first ever single purchase and a record that probably provides all kinds of Proustian rushes for those of us of a certain age. As a result, a snippet of Joan ended up in Trance Stance (which also nods its head in the direction Dexys). 

The smokey, late night club vibe of Trance Stance comes with three remixes, all of which spin the song off in new directions. The Time Machine Dropouts remix comes via Matt Gunn (Electric wardrobe’s main man) and Chad Jackson, an irresistible phunked up version with loops of bass, a floor filling drum break and whooshes. San Francisco’s Cole Odin hits the space rock buttons, a cosmic trip with the controls firmly set for going further. Lastly Jesse provides his own remix, done with his 10: 40 headgear on, the Haight Steppin Remix, stripped down, gnarly electronics with whistles. Trance Stance is at Electric Wardrobe Records here. 

Joan Jett had form for rocking up with well chosen cover versions. I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll was originally released by Arrows in 1975. While on tour with The Runaways a year later she saw Arrows perform it on TV. Joan recorded and released a version with a pair of Sex Pistols, Steve Jones and Paul Cook in 1979 but then re- recorded it with The Blackhearts in ’81. In 1981 Joan followed her hit single with another one, her cover of Crimson And Clover, a song that is peerless in early 80s pop- rock. It was originally a 1968 hit for Tommy James And The Shondells, bubblegum psyche- pop. Joan’s version is totally badass, as they say.

Crimson And Clover

Saturday Sessions

Keeping up with all the music that is being released is a full time job, one I don’t always have the time to devote to it. There are albums and releases from last year I still need to explore. All the while, more and more music comes forth via the magic of the internet with radio shows, sessions and mixes. This is a round up of some recent shows and mixes, some I’ve enjoyed in full and some I’ve only got partway through and will go back to. If you listen to all of these today, you’ll finish sometime this evening, exhausted maybe but replenished. 

First up is Justin Robertson and his bi- monthly Temple Of Wonders. This episode is fresh off the press, broadcast three days ago on 10th January, a two hour jaunt through Justin’s record box taking in a typically eclectic range of music- psychedelia, dub, ambient, global, setting out with Pilot Voyager and concluding two hours and thirty eight tracks later with Tim Hardin. Listen at Mixcloud. 

On New Year’s Eve Sean Johnston stayed home and broadcast to those staying in and to those who’d bene out and came back to find Sean still at the decks, seven hours and forty five minutes of chuggy cosmic ALFOS tunes, starting out quite slow and trippy and getting increasingly propulsive and dancey. Excellence as standard. Listen here. 

Jesse Fahnestock and Emilia Harmony’s music was a repeat attraction at this blog last year, their Electric Blue Vision EP, Jesse’s 10:40 album, a slew of Jezebell tracks and various other releases, lighting up 2023. Jesse and Emilia sat in with Brighton’s Balearic Ultras and Music For Dreams playing music and chatting, an hour of laid back discussion, and perfectly pitched and seamlessly sequenced music, telling the stories of what lies behind the Electric Blue Vision EP. Both Jesse and Emilia have great voices for radio- it’s a lovely way to spend an hour. Listen to it here. 

Lastly on New Year’s Day Nina Walsh appeared on the long running Sonic Treasures radio show, Brother Joseph’s Glasgow based radio show that transmits via radio Magnetic, a trove of the leftfield and eclectic, ambient, electronic and psychedelic. Nina played a perfectly sequenced two hours of music, some unreleased tracks done with Andrew Weatherall, plenty of music from her Fireflies band (as heard on Killing Eve), some WRF and some unreleased Andrew Weatherall remixes of Fireflies. Find it at Soundcloud. 

While we’re talking about radio, transmissions and new music, the death of legendary radio DJ Annie Nightingale was announced yesterday. Annie was BBC 1’s first female DJ and a tireless and endlessly energetic advocate for new music, leftfield sounds and underground music, not least much of the music that has featured here over the last fourteen years. She died aged 83. RIP Annie. 

An Hour Of 2023 In Dub

While starting to consider the end of year lists of records, singles, albums, EPs and gigs it struck me that much of what I’ve listened to this year has been very dub oriented, the rhythms and sounds of Jamaica and its 2023 diaspora very much near the forefront of everything. As my list making began and the scribbling lengthened and grew, it seemed that a dub stop off in advance of the main event might be a good way to fill this Sunday’s slot, an hour of dubby tunes to ease into the day as the week of the shortest days and longest nights approaches. There’s loads missing that could have been included, not least the dubs of songs by JIM and Richard Norris’ Oracle Sounds album, so this isn’t definitive, it’s just a version. 

An Hour Of 2023 In Dub

• Katy J. Pearson: Willow’s Song (Richard Norris Ritual Mix)
• Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright: El Qasr Dub
• Justin Robertson’s Deadstock 33s: Lone Raver In Dub
• Sonic Boom and Panda Bear: Edge Of The Edge Dub
• Stinky Jim: Quiet Spillage (The Long Champs Remix)
• Unloved: Thrill me (Justin Robertson’s Temple Of Wonders Remix)
• Whitelands: Setting Sun (AR Kane Initiation Dub)
• Electric Blue Vision: Other Skies (Hardway Bros Meet Monkton Uptown Version)
• Dot Allison: Unchanged (Glok Remix)
• African Head Charge: I Chant Too

Katy J. Pearson’s cover of Willow’s Song came out in several new versions as part of a five disc celebration of the 50th anniversary of The Wicker Man in June. Richard Norris’ dub mix is seven minutes of peak 2023 dubiness, the bassline and Katy’s voice and that haunting horn all pushed to the fore. Richard’s Oracle Sounds Volume 1 has been one of 2023’s highlights, an album of  first rate dub sounds and rhythms. Volume 2, due out in February, can be pre- ordered here. 

Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright’s Psychedelic Science is one of 2023’s best albums, a dub centred collision of South London and North Wales with Ram Dass, David Bowie, Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs and The Grateful Dead stirred into their dub stew. 

Lone Raver In Dub is one of Justin Robertson’s from the vaults releases, out digitally as Part 4 of his Deadstock 33s Unreleased Volumes. Fast rocking dub from September 2023. 

Sonic Boom and Panda Bear’s Reset album was remixed by Adrian Sherwood in full, the 60s bubblegum pop fed through the On U Sound dub machine to fine effect. Like Oracle Sounds Volume 1 an album that really reveals itself fully on vinyl. 

Stinky Jim’s Social Awareness album came out as a follow up remix album in July, the original album remixed and dubbed out. Stinky Jim’s dub comes all the way from Auckland, New Zealand, remixed in dub  style here by Welsh wizard The Long Champs. 

Unloved’s Polychrome was a nine song album from early 23, a follow up to 2022’s The Pink Album. The remixes followed a month later with Justin Robertson’s taking the road to Scratch and Tubby, a rocking dub skank. 

Whitelands are a shoegaze band on Sonic Cathedral. In June a 10″ single with remixes by returning shoegaze/ dreampop heroes AR Kane found its way into the wild, Rudy and Alex finding acres of dub space in among the wash of guitars. 

Electric Blue Vision, Jesse Fahnestock and Emilia Harmony, put out their Other Skies EP in November, an end of year hit in certain quarters of the internet, including this one. Hardway Bros and Monkton (Sean Johnston and Duncan Gray) often pull skanking rabbits out of dub hats when remixing together. This is among the year’s best. 

Dot Allison’s Consciousology, also on Sonic Cathedral, is an indie folk/ psyche/ dreamy meeting of melody and poetic lyrics. For this remix Andy Bell in GLOK guise found the dub heart of the song, somewhere in the similar cosmos as Brendan Lynch’s 1993 remix of Paul Weller’s Kosmos.

Aftican Head Charge’s A Trip To Bolgatanga is a 2023 high spot, ten of the latest stop off points on Bonjo’s four decade voyage with Adrian Sherwood.

Other Skies

Jesse Fahnestock and Emilia Harmony’s new musical outfit Electric Blue Vision release a four track EP today on Brighton’s Higher Love label, making a late dash for those lists that people are busy compiling at this point in the year. Jesse sent me a version of the original mix of Other Skies a while back and I was smitten from first play, the swirly organ intro and warm thud of bass joined by Emilia’s whispery vocals, everything a lovely hazy shade of blue but tinged with some yellow and amber. 

Jesse has said he was aiming high with Other Skies, looking to Higher Than The Sun and One Dove’s Fallen for inspiration. Other Skies has that widescreen, wide eyed ambient/ psychedelic feel, the drums and bass pushing it along but it has a sense of drift and yearning in the vocals too, Emilia singing, ‘Can you help me to find my way? Do you know the way back home? I’m ready to go, I said I’m ready to go…’. It’s late at night, the venue’s closed and moved everyone left at the bar out onto the pavement, the streets are cold and lonely, home is calling. It’s a lovely song and I can’t recommend it enough. 

If you’re not convinced by all of that, there are three remixes to turn your head. Balearic Ultras give it some heavy bass, drums and FX, filtering everything through a heat haze stripped back and minimal. The Tambores En Beniras remix goes for shimmer and shimmy, a slo mo thud of kick drum, twinkles of guitar and echoes all over the voices, a few lines isolated, ‘up down spin me round’, nodding in New Order’s direction, and there’s a piano line near the end that sends shivers up and down the central nervous system. Sean Johnston and Duncan Gray join forces again as Hardway Bros Meets Monkton Uptown, a dubbed out, melodica led stomp, percussion rattling round and Emilia looped into infinity. The bass of Wobble and the ghost of Augustus Pablo battling it out in other skies. 

You can (and should) buy the Other Skies EP is here.