An Hour Of The Flightpath Estate AW61 Afternoon Set

This is my hour’s set from last Saturday afternoon at AW61 at The Golden Lion, Todmorden, re- created at home. The photo above shows my view from the DJ booth as my set ended and the auction and raffle began- you may recognise some of the faces getting ready to bid on items from Andrew Weatherall’s studio. 

Once we’ve got all the other sets and the evening’s rotations recreated we can upload the entire thing but I thought I’d share mine in the meantime. It comes in at over an hour and I only played for an hour on the day- from memory, I mixed Biosphere’s En- Trance out because the file seemed very quiet (even for an ambient track) and it is in the mix below too. I think I mixed out of Underworld’s 8 Ball halfway through as well but just left it playing in full here because, really, what sort of person mixes out the second half of 8 Ball? I’d just faded the GLOK Starlight Dub of A Mountain Of One’s Star in when Gig, the Golden Lion’s legendary landlady, took the mic to start the auction (along with Lizzie and Sofia) so that track was left mostly unplayed- you’ll have to imagine the auction and raffle taking place when you reach that point in my set (unless you were there in which case replay it in your mind). I played Emotionally Clear as the raffle ended and to provide my handover to Dan who was waiting in the wings. 

Adam’s Flightpath Estate Afternoon Set At AW61

  • Coyote: Western Revolution
  • Durutti Column: Bordeaux Sequence
  • Psychederek: Test Card Girl
  • Four Tet: Loved
  • Rick Cuevas: The Birds
  • Biosphere: En- Trance
  • Underworld: 8 Ball
  • Wixel: Expressway To Yr Skull (Long Champs Bonus Beats)
  • This Mortal Coil: Edit To The Siren
  • Bjork: One Day
  • James Holden: Common Land
  • A Mountain Of One: Star (GLOK Starlight Dub)
  • David Holmes and Raven Violet: Emotionally Clear

Western Revolution is Coyote’s sublime edit of Gil Scott Heron’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. I had half a mind to start with Lonely, which is from the same vinyl only EP out last year, Magic Wand Special Edition Vol. 2, but Mr Holmes played it the night before. 

Bordeaux Sequence was on The Durutti Column’s 1987 album The Guitar And Other Machines, a moment of genuine beauty from Vini Reilly. It is a re- recorded version of Bordeaux from 1983’s Another Setting. A couple of people in the room gave me a ‘thank you for playing Durutti Column’ look.

Psychederek is from Stretford, just up the road from me. Test Card Girl was a digital only single from 2023 and I’m not over it yet

Loved was a single from Four Tet, also from last year and is now the opening track on his Three album. Another 2023 song that has stuck around well into ’24. 

The Birds is by Rick Cuevas, from a self – released, private pressing album called Symbolism that came out in 1984, an album described on Discogs as ‘soft rock/ AOR’. I wouldn’t necessarily call The Birds either- a friend once described it as ‘Durutti Column on steroids’ which I’m happier with. I’m fairly certain I only know of this song because of Andrew Weatherall referencing it in an interview or playing it on a radio show. 

Biosphere’s En- Trance is ambient/ techno from Belgium in 1994, an album called Patashnik. It’s just some synth drones and an acoustic guitar- I say ‘just’, it’s much more than that obviously. Shame this WAV file I have is so quiet. 

Underworld’s 8 Ball was on the soundtrack to The Beach, the Leonardo Di Caprio film from 2000. 8 Ball is a nine minute low key epic with fluid guitar playing and some of Karl’s loveliest singing, lyrics about men with empty whiskey bottles and walkie talkies and flaming 8 ball tattoos on their arms, a man who eventually throws his arms around him. They gave this away to a soundtrack, a soundtrack where it was overshadowed a little by All Saints and Moby- most bands would kill for a tune this good and would make it a single or the track they built an album around. Someone in the Lion asked me what this was and took some convincing it was Karl on vocals.

Wixel are from Belgium (with hindsight, there’s a bit of a Belgian theme running through this mix) and put out a cover of Sonic Youth’s Expressway To Yr Skull in 2008, part of a seven track EP of Sonic Youth covers. The Long Champs edit turns it into a shimmering, semi -ambient haze that led to a couple of enquiries in the pub- and if you turn a couple of people onto something new to them, that’s what it’s all about isn’t it. 

Edit To The Siren is an In The Valley edit of Song To The Siren, This Mortal Coil’s signature cover of Tim Buckley’s song. Someone once told me this was sacrilege but for me its got a dubby/ Balearic splendour and is perfect Saturday afternoon vibes. 

One Day is one of the key early Bjork solo songs, from 1993’s Debut. The dubby bassline, house shimmer, Nellee Hooper’s production and Bjork’s delivery are all superb. 

Common Land was one of the tracks on James Holden’s 2023 album Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities, an album I still go back to a year later. The burbling synths, birdcall, techno- ish drums and warbling sax combine to create something very heady and transportative. It’s also a tribute to the free party movement and early 90s rave and felt quite fitting for the Lion and Todmorden.

A Mountain of One’s Stars Planets Dust Me was one of my favourite albums from 2022. Andy Bell’s GLOK remix is a spaced out, sun- baked treat. 

Emotionally Clear is from David Holmes’ Blind On A Galloping Horse, 2023’s number one Bagging Area album. Seeing David Holmes bidding at the auction at AW61 from behind the decks will take some beating in 2024. 

NYE 23

Let’s wave goodbye to 2023 with the final Sunday mix of the year, this one stretching out with an hour and thirteen minute’s worth of tunes from this year, not exactly a Best Of 2023 (although these are among the best of this year) more of a Some Of 2023. A mixture of trippy, dubby electronic music, throbbing dance tunes, chuggy indie dance, Balearic pop and Dublin guitar slinging sturm und drang. 

Happy New Year. Have fun tonight however you’re choosing to celebrate. Thank you to everyone who’s come here this year, to read and comment. I don’t think I write this thing with an audience in mind but it helps to know that there is one, and that the people that populate it and places like this one are defintely a community. The comments and responses, particularly to some of the more personal, grief related posts, are genuinely much appreciated and a real support. Thank you, all of you. 

Onwards into 24. 

2023 NYE Mix

  • Aphex Twin: Blackbox Life Recorder 21f
  • Four Tet: Three Drums
  • Khidja: Do You Know This Record Marius?
  • Psychederek: Test Card Girl
  • 10:40: Little Black Dress (Undressed Dub)
  • A Man Called Adam: The Girl With The Hole In Her Heart
  • David Holmes: Stop Apologising (Horse Meat Disco Vocal Remix)
  • Marshall Watson and Cole Odin: Just A Daydream Away (Hardway Bros Remix)
  • Islandman: Godless Ceremony (Hardway Bros Remix)
  • James Holden: Common Land
  • JIM: Still River Flow
  • Fontaines DC: ‘Cello Song

Monday’s Long Song

James Holden’s new album, Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities, came out last Friday. I’ve not heard it in full yet but the second single from it which I posted a couple of weeks ago, Common Land, has been on regular repeat play round here and is firmly one of the year’s highlights to date. Two Fridays ago a long, eight minute third single/ track came out ahead of the album- In The End You’ll Know– written in almost one take in the studio on his wonky Prophet 600 synth.

In The End You’ll Know is a lengthy ambient piece, twinkling synths and waves of sound, ebbs of space dust, gently joined by whooshing noises and a very distinct lysergic flow. At three minutes thirty eight seconds another more urgent and bubbling synthline comes in followed by drums and we’re off into somewhere with more energy- still very trippy and bendy- but moving emphatically forwards.  Very lovely stuff indeed. 

Common Land

This track came out last month but I only got around to listening to it recently. It’s fair to say that it is so far up my street it is practically delivering itself through my letterbox. James Holden is a DJ and producer from Leicestershire (Market Bosworth to be exact, the town close to the site of the Battle of Bosworth that conclusively ended the 15th century Wars of the Roses). He hit the big time at the turn of the millennium with the trance single Horizons and then again with his legendary 2004 remix of The Sky Was Pink by Nathan Fake. He got tired of the life of the superstar DJ, and ten years ago headed back to the smaller stages and fields and has now returned to his roots, to the sounds of the early 90s and the records that first made an impression on him- The KLF, Orbital, Future Sound Of London, 808 State and pirate radio stations picked up through long wave radio. 

James has collected sounds from the English countryside, field recordings of birdsong, and they adorn the new single, Common Land. It opens with the very early 90s sounding synths and then drums kick in, the spirit of 808 Sate and FSOL conjured up for the 2020s. There is distorted, high pitched birdsong, repeating synth notes and then a sax part (by Christopher Duffin, a member of Xam Duo who I posted not too long ago). The more natural sounding birdsong chirrups and the sax wails, the euphoric synth notes repeat and eventually the drums come to a halt for a lovely rave ending, ready to be mixed into whatever is cued up to follow. 

Common Land references the Right To Roam protests of the 1930s, the Criminal Justice Bill protests of the mid- 90s and more recent protests about the use of land and its ownership such as the ban on camping in Dorset. He sees dance music has still having an anti- establishment power, that it can still be a force for good, bringing people together in a way which as he says, ‘doesn’t have to be a capitalist- entertainment- complex’. The forthcoming album, if all this wasn’t enough, is called This Is A High- Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities, and I’m thoroughly looking forward to hearing it. 

Late Eighties

James Holden released an album in 2013 called The Inheritors, fifteen tracks that demolished and (deep breath) deconstructed electronic music. On Delabole he took the entire idea of the song structure to pieces, a track that seems chaotic but eventually finds a kind of groove and re- adjusts itself, making sense of noise. 

Delabole

Towards the end of the album he produced his best piece of work (with the exception of his remix of Nathan Fake’s The Sky Was Pink), an eight minute journey with rippling melodies and waves of sound, a blissed out flipside to Delabole. I visited Blackpool a few times in the late eighties and I have to say it didn’t feel like this sounds but maybe James went on a day the sun was shining. Regardless, Holden made this superb piece of emotive, melancholic techno and found a previously unknown link between the Fylde Coast and West German electronic music of the 1970s.

Blackpool Late Eighties