Richard Norris' tribute to Andrew Weatherall came out on 6th April, what would have been Andrew's 61st birthday. It's a lovely piece of music, seven minutes of drum machine propulsion, dancing synths and pulsing sequencers, all soft glow euphoria tinged with the double edged sword of what and who has been lost. Buy Weatherall's Last Stand and the alternative version, the No Pads Dub at Bandcamp.
I'm reading Richard's autobiography- Strange Things Are Happening- and am only a few chapters in. It's the mid- 80s and Richard has one to Liverpool University (I went in '88 so we almost overlapped). By this point, his late teens, he has already been in two bands, had records played by John Peel, sold out 1000 copies of a single through Rough Trade, been involved with two record labels , one in London and in his home town St Albans, been on the fringes of various club nights and on arriving in Liverpool started a psyche/ freakbeat night at a nightclub in town. We've not even hot the acid house days yet and Richard's crammed more in than most people.
Yesterday saw the latest installment in the continuing adventures of our album, Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1. Every step along the way has been a leap into the unknown and it has exceeded our expectations at every stage, from David Holmes saying 'yes' to Justin Robertson sending us the first piece of music to the rest of the tracks coming in to Andy Bell at the eleventh hour sending us his cover of Smokebelch to Rusty's beautiful artwork to the first run of 500 copies selling out in a day to Lauren Laverne playing some of the tracks on 6 Music and making it compilation of the week to the actual physical records arriving to it appearing on Piccadilly Records website a couple of weeks ago... on and on it's gone, jaw dropping at every turn. Last week when I went to see ACR at Soup I called in at Piccadilly Records and was massively excited to see our album in the racks. Then, entering the venue, the man in front of me had a copy in his carrier bag. Yesterday, another amazing moment- Piccadilly Records gave us a full window display.
I've been buying records from this shop in three different city centre locations, since the late 80s. They are my first choice of shop for new music. To see thirty six copies of our album in the window was a fairly mind blowing experience. Me, Dan and Martin from The Flightpath Estate and Matt from The Golden Lion all attended- and here we are (left to right, Dan, me, Martin, Matt. Yes, Matt is bringing the average age down a bit). Twenty copies of the album went to Piccadilly but I believe they've all gone now. Ten went to Vinyl Exchange over the road (another shop I've been buying records from for decades).
With this long running Sunday mix series I usually try to come in at around thirty to forty minutes, occasionally going up to an hour. Today's mix comfortably tops any and every Sunday mix for running time, seven and a half hours of tracks and songs played by us at The Golden Lion at AW61 at the start of April. We played from Saturday afternoon to evening, kicking off at about 2pm with Baz, taking an hour each (my set ended with the AW61 auction and raffle, the first time I've DJed to support an auction of Andrew Weatherall's belongings which included a mug, some cufflinks and his stash tin). At about 7pm we began to play back to back, three tracks each and then two each, rotating on and off. It was brilliant fun, a wonderful experience. The sets weren't recorded but we've done our best to re- create them since. It's not entirely as was played- there are a few things missing that are currently unreleased and which can't be distributed more widely just yet (including one that's missing that may well be one of the tracks for what will hopefully be Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 but I'll say no more about that at the moment). Also, in my three I played David Holmes' remix of Sylvia by Lisa Moorish. I hadn't been paying enough attention to notice that Mark had played it earlier so to avoid repetition I've taken that out and replaced it with David's remix of X- Press 2 (which I had in my bag and was planning on playing later but didn't). Some of our memories are a little sketchy in places but it's fairly close to what we played between 2pm and 9.30pm on Saturday 6th April at The Golden Lion in Todmorden before Sean Johnston and Duncan Gray took over and lifted the roof tiles.
The entire seven and a half hour set is at Mixcloud here. I have an mp3 of it which is a whopping 1GB file and too big to host at my usual file hosting service. I've uploaded into WeTransfer and it will be live for a week from today if you want to download it. I haven't managed to recreate the auction and raffle- that really was a 'you had to be there' thing. It took place between me playing A Mountain Of One's Star (GLOK Starlight Dub) and David Holmes' Emotionally Clear and you'll just have to use your imagination or your memory, but it looked like this...
A few weeks ago I posted some tracks from Soul Jazz Records 100% Dynamite series, a sequence of compilation albums exploring records from Jamaica, every track a reggae/ dub winner. Soul Jazz expanded their mission way beyond reggae and the salsa and Latino funk they started out with. In 2005 Soul Jazz 111 was a two CD compilation titled Can You Jack? Chicago Acid And Experimental House 1985- 1995. The cover is black with a red circle which has the word ACID inside it. The first track is Maurice's This Is Acid and the last is Phuture's Acid Tracks. It's wall to wall acid. In between the start and finish it takes in lesser known acid tracks, B-sides and a few classics, wall to wall Roland 303 synthesisers, circa 120 bpm and endless variations on that bassline, the one that at deafening volume makes your chest pound and your clothes vibrate. Over the course of two CDs it can get a bit samey but equally if you need to clean your ears out and cleanse your palette, there are seventeen slices of powerful, raw, thundering/ minimal, swirling Chicago acid and house with jackhammer drum machine beats that caused something of a revolution when it arrived in the UK and across Europe, that will do just that. Here are three of those acid tracks, the two mentioned above (Maurice's vocal claiming definitive ownership, Phuture's twelve minute opus that is musically definitive and one from Green Velvet in the middle).
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.
More new music, guaranteed to put a spring in your step and a smile on your face- it did mine anyway- as spring springs, greenery is finally appearing on threadbare trees and there's an occasional glimpse of something called the sun.
Psychederek lives in Stretford and has made some wonderful tracks in recent years- the Space Arcade EP, Test Card Girl and At The Mountains Of Madness can all be found at Bandcamp and are all worth digging into. Last week he announced the release of an EP titled Alt!, four tracks digitally and on vinyl (all available from early June). There are two to listen to now here, the first a six minute technicolour throb that starts like it's already been playing somewhere else for a while called Nowhere To Nowhere, a song for a psychedelic Stretford, choppy guitars, motorik drums, wired guitar and synth toplines, chunky percussion and bumping one note bassline. The second is a cover of 808 State's Pacific, a song that I'm happy to hear in almost any version/ remix/ cover, a cover that sets out adrift on memory bliss, a tripped out mellowed out, slowed down, psyched out sunbaked cover with A Certain Ratio's Donald Johnson on drums. If the other two tracks on Alt! are as good, we have one of the EPs of the year looking at us.
A month ago Psychederek released Tongue- Tied, a single cut from similar (tie dyed) cloth, starting out all laid back with drifting vox but then picking up the pace when the drums kick in. Tongue- Tied is at Bandcamp with a pair of excellent Moodymanc remixes to boot.
That was to be the end of this post but I got in yesterday and a friend had tipped me off to this, Alex Kassian covering Manuel Gottsching's classic E2- E4, a twelve minute electronic ride into kosmiche/ Balearic/ cosmic disco from Berlin. If that's not enough there are two Mad Professor dub remixes (not available to listen to yet. The full release comes out in late May along with the 12" vinyl- and yes, I've missed out on the vinyl too. Listen etc here. Twelve minutes and twenty one seconds of your day you won't regret.
Alex Kassian's Spirit Of Eden came out in 2021, one of my favourite releases from that year, a record I do not believe I will ever tire of, a track that sits in a space somewhere between the sun sinking into a melting Mediterranean sea, cosmic dub jazz and the theme tune to The Rockford Files. But miles better than that sounds.
Nottingham duo Coyote are experts at choosing a vocal sample and setting against the backdrop of some very atmospheric music. Their latest EP, Every Forest Has A Shadow, has two slices of casual Coyote brilliance. First the title track...
The music is wonderfully evocative, a haze of reverb and FX, some synth chords, a tambourine, drums, all very organic and natural sounding. Aptly because the vocal sample is about environmentalism and the natural world...
'If you think along the lines of nature, one doesn't know what will change? Is it trees or is it the wood? One thing is sure, a great change is imminent... only a great danger exists with man himself'.
Know One Cares is a more psychedelic track with drums that pick up and push it on, tumbling synthlines and some acidic squiggle action, a gathering intensity, and a female voice saying, 'no one cares for me'. The hand drum that rattles in and out gives it some welly as the bass pads away.
Each track is also on the EP in remixed form, one remix courtesy of Sebra Cruz and the other by Vanity Project. You can get it at Bandcamp.
A Certain Ratio's new album, It All Comes Down To This, came out last week. Piccadilly Records and the band arranged an album launch where if you bought the album from them, for an extra £2.00 you got a ticket for a gig at Soup, a 200 capacity club in the Northern Quarter with a Q and A with Martin, Jez and Donald followed by ACR playing the album in full. At a time when £2.00 won't even buy a half of lager in the Northern Quarter this seemed a no brainer as they say.
The three long standing members of ACR have stripped back to a three piece for the album, their third since 2020, recorded with producer Dan Carey. Pulling the sound back to guitar, bass and drums plus Martin's trumpet has shifted the ACR sound again- they really do sound like a band re- energised, fired up, with something to say and the means to say it (thanks to the deal with Mute records). The Q and A is interesting and funny, with stories of drummer Donald practicing his skills as a young man in his front garden in Wythenshawe, and Rob Gretton giving him thumbs up or down when he passed by depending on whether he liked what he heard. Gretton would soon introduce Don to the drummer- less ACR and the band suddenly shifted from post- punk gloom to punk- funk. Asked who the best bassist in the band is (ACR gigs frequently see members swap instruments) all three say 'Viv', the youthful bassist they recruited last year to deputise for Jez (whose rheumatoid arthritis has forced him to stop playing the bass live.
After the Q and A we get the album, played in full and in order, the ten songs already sounding like ACR live favourites. The opener and title track thumps in, led in by a rat- a- tat- tat drum intro and Martin's guitar, trebly and right up close,with urgent Jez's vocals. Martin's guitar and Jez's bass form the sound of the album- Donald's drums absolute on the beat, Jez's basslines deep and rubbery while Martin's guitars slide around, clanging and bright. Second song Keep It Real thunders in straight away, choppy guitar riff and freight train rhythms.
The songs shoot past, both on record and at the gig, short, sharp bursts, transmissions from a band forty five years into a career and not content to rest or take it easy. Surfer Ticket rolls ominously, some of the early 80s Factory dread evident. God Knows echoes some of the poppier sound that they reached for at the end of the 80s, a melody line picked out on the guitar and some sweetly sung multi- tracked vocals from Jez. Out From Under seems to nod its head to Shack Up, their calling card, with staccato bass and chak chak chak guitar riff. Estate Kings is narrated by Don from behind the drumkit, a Manc noir reflection on growing up in M23. Final song of the album and the gig is Dorothy Says, a song inspired by the words of Dorothy Parker, Jez singing over a rolling groove and ringing guitar line, 'Well I've heard it said that beauty is only skin deep/ But ugly it goes clean to the bone', and later, 'I plan to die at the last possible minute/ I'm not myself I'm not really in it/ I can't seem to filter out the static/ And my self- doubt is automatic'.
The album, the gig and the songs show there's plenty of life left in ACR, a group who've outlasted many of their contemporaries and are making new music more alive and more vital than the ones who have lasted the course. They're on tour from this week ending up back at Manchester's New Century Hall in mid- May (two days before my birthday incidentally) playing the album and then a second set of ACR classics, and if you can, I'd get out and go to see them.
