Monday's Long Song

Sticking with my Jezebell themed weekend, by happy coincidence one of Jesse from Jezebell's other projects released a new song last Friday and it's quite unlike anything else he's done before- and unlike most other people too. Electric Blue Vision are Jesse and Emilia Harmony and have a couple of releases behind them. This new song- Folklore Rising- is nine minutes long, a song in two acts. The first part is all Medieval folk, Emilia's voice wafting above music from the 14th century, a folk song from before the modern world existed, lute and weird percussion, pastoral sounds. The second half judders into another gear, suddenly transplanting Jesse, Emelia and us into a techno future, a world where Detroit joins the madrigal party. The piano runs at eight minutes are a particular joy. Get it here free or name your own price. 

Forty Minutes Of Jezebell

A Jezebell mix for this Sunday to go with their weekend takeover at The Golden Lion in Todmorden with the emphasis on dancing. Jesse and Darren's music, edits and remixes have been one of post- 2021's joys starting with Thrill Me in November 2021, taking in various EPs and singles, an album and most recently Cream Tease (wordplay and sexual innuendo are a Jezebell speciality. Personally, I'm not a fan of innuendo- if I see one in my writing I whip it out, straight away*). 

Forty Minutes Of Jezebell

• Bibbles (Pots And Pans Mix)
• Re- birth
• Perfect Din
• Citric
• We All Need (Jezebell's Ghost Train Mix)
• The Jezebell Spirit
• Darren's Theme

Bibbles is by Brighton Balearica duo Andres Y Xavi, a single on Higher Ground in February 2024. Jezebell did three remixes, the Pots And Pans Mix being my favourite, all manner of whirrs and clicks and abstract rhythm sounds.

Re- birth first saw the light of day on the Diavol edit label and then on Jezebellearic Beats Vol. 1, a shimmering, shuffling, woozy piece of edit work. 

Perfect Din is from Shelter Me, a compilation released in April 2024 to raise funds for Crisis, a homelessness charity. 

Citirc was one of four tracks released as the Weekend Machines EP, machine funk for cyborgs to strut their stuff to. Hand claps, hi hats, guitar riffs, synths, all synced up for endless, beautiful repetition.

We All Need is one of the songs on A Certain Ratio's It All Comes Down To This album, one of 2024's best records. Jezebell's Ghost Train Mix came about when ACR's Martin Moscrop was record shopping in Berlin and found and bought a copy of Jezebellearic Beats Vol. 1. 

The Jezebell Spirit takes one of the key tracks from David Byrne and Brian Eno's groundbreaking 1981 album My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts and Jezebells it, the 808 cracking away under the sampled American TV preacher. My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts is a seminal album, a record streets ahead of almost everyone else in the early 80s. 

Darren's Theme is from Cream Tease, a track and EP with its tongue firmly in its cheek and possibly its trousers undone as well. A snatch of vocal from Karen Finley's Tales Of Taboo, a 1986 song with a lyric that could be described as sexually explicit. 

* Thanks are due to Kenneth Williams for this joke obviously

Soundtrack Saturday

Midnight Cowboy, John Schlesinger's 1969 film, was one of those films that when I was a teen in the 80s  you had to watch, one of those 60s and 70s films that were required viewing and would turn up at some point late night on BBC2- along with Bonnie And Clyde, Apocalypse Now!, The Deer Hunter, Taxi Driver, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and 2001. 

Midnight Cowboy is an odd couple film set in the late 60s New York seedy underbelly. Jon Voight plays Joe Buck, newly arrived in the city from Texas dressed in cowboy clothes to find work as a male prostitute. He bumps into Dustin Hoffman's Ratso, a conman and hustler, and they team up, Ratso as pimp. There are unpleasant encounters, unpaid bills, sex acts in cinemas, flashbacks to childhood trauma and Ratso's increasingly poor health. Eventually the pair end up on a Greyhound bus bound for the warmer climes of Florida. Joe abandons his cowboy clothes and hustling dreams and says that when they reach Miami he will get a regular job but by this point, as the bus heads south, it's already too late for Ratso. 

The film won three Oscars and the Library Of Congress designated it as being 'culturally, historically or aesthetically significant'. Hoffman and Voigt both became stars. It's got an edge- it's gritty, and unflinching and bleak if ultimately a film about friendship. It strikes me though as a film its unlikely that today's teenagers are watching in the way we were in the mid- to- late 80s. 

The soundtrack is as legendary as the film, two songs in particular songs for the ages. Harry Nilsson sang Everybody's Talkin', a 1966 Fred Neil song about escape and leaving the city for a simpler, better life. Nilsson's version, released with the film in May 1969, was the film's theme song, playing over the opening scenes and again at the close. 

Everybody's Talkin'

It wasn't until writing this piece that I remembered that Bob Dylan had been supposed to supply the film's theme song and wrote Lay Lady Lay for it but didn't complete it in time. It's impossible to imagine Midnight Cowboy without Everybody's Talkin', and with Lay Lady Lay in its place. 

John Barry wrote and recorded an equally brilliant and beautiful song, the title track, a gorgeous instrumental with the best harmonica part ever recorded snaking its way through Barry's laid back track, the harmonica courtesy of Belgian jazz musician Toots Thielemans.

Midnight Cowboy (Theme)

Over At Ban Ban Ton Ton And At The Golden Lion

I've been reviewing records over at Ban Ban Ton Ton again, Dr Rob's Japan based Balearic and electronic music one stop, most recently on Monday of this week when the newest Coyote mini- album came out. Coyote (Timm and Ampo) have been in a rich vein of form in the last few years, releasing a slew of 12" singles, albums, six track mini- albums, edits and remixes. In May there's the prospect of a collaboration EP with Peaking Lights, a 12" called Love Letters on their own Is This Balearic ? label. In the meantime, hot on the heels of last year's six track mini- album Hurry Up And Live, comes Wailing At The Yellow Dawn- a record which evokes all sorts of things but mainly for me music as a soundtrack to dreaming. My review at Ban Ban Ton Ton is here. 

A week before that I reviewed an album by Thought Leadership, an album called Ill Of Pentacles that is about to get a vinyl release on Be With Records. I knew it was familiar and realised while listening to it that my friend Spencer sent me a link to it last year when it was released as digital and on cassette- getting re- acquainted with it second time around was even better. Thought Leadership is a mysterious musician living in Edgeley, Stockport armed with nothing  more than a guitar, some FX pedals, a drum machine and a home studio. The music, ten tracks of it, is entirely instrumental, FX affected pieces of guitar music with occasional drum machine backing. It's a wonderful album, still available at Bandcamp. The most obvious comparison in sound is Vini Reilly but other post- punk and indie guitarists are in there too- John McGeoch, Robin Guthrie, Johnny Marr and Maurice Deebank of Felt. My full review is here. There's a second album too, Ace Of Swords which was recorded in the middle of last year, at Bandcamp. 

It put me in mind of another Mancunian guitarist whose music I reviewed for Ban Ban Ton Ton, a pair of  re- releases from the early 80s by Kevin McCormick together with a new one called Passing Clouds. I wrote about Passing Clouds last October and I didn't share it but you can find it here. This is It's Been A Long Time...

Meanwhile, over in Todmorden at The Golden Lion Jezebell have a weekend takeover, a line up of DJs, musicians and chancers playing on Saturday and Sunday. The DJs are Darren and Jesse (from Jezebell), Jamie Tolley, Martin Moscrop from ACR, Nessa Johnston, Stuart Alexander, Kim Lana, Adam Roberts and FC Kahuna. The musician playing live is OBOST (Bobby Langfield). The chancer is me. I'm on at 4pm on Sunday afternoon, playing after Jesse's afternoon set. 

Both days should be great fun, the Sunday session maybe a bit more chilled than the Saturday, it's free all weekend and it'll be great to finally meet Jesse and Darren after featuring so much of their music here since 2021 and only ever chatting online. 

Out a couple of weeks on Berlin's Nein Records is an EP by Parvale (Ian Vale and Neil Parnell) with the track Breaker City complete with Jezebell's Nice And Slow Remix, a cut 'n' paste, jerky breakbeat anthem for dancefloor action. The EP is here. 

Midnight Echoes And American Questions

Out on Exeter's Mighty Force label, the home of much high quality electronic music in recent years, is this ten track album from J- Lower. The album is packed with deep, dynamic tracks. It opens in fine style with this one, String Theory, a punchy and powerful acid track that never stops giving. 

Vortex is one I keep going back too, more 303 action, busy drum pattern, a squelchy bottom end, the distinctive tink of the electronic cowbell and a mangled snatch of vocal. You can listen and buy here.

M- Paths released two albums on Mighty Force and also have a Bandcamp page adorned with electronic music, not just the optimistic ambient- techno of M- Paths but also Reverb Delay's heavy duty dub techno and more recently a track by a third outfit, Mars Geographical. America, What Have You Done! came out last week, an eight minute reaction to the election of Donald Trump and his first few weeks in office which have upended the international order, sold Ukraine down the river in order to make friends with Putin's Russia (appeasement has some powerful messages for us when the history of the 20th century is taken in to account) and sewn chaos and distrust internationally. America, What Have You Done! samples Trump at the start and then powers into a rolling, throbbing acid thumper with a message in the middle. Get it free/ name your price here. 

Nobody Loves You More

Here's one to file in the Albums I Missed In 2024 file- Kim Deal's solo album Nobody Loves You More. There's lots to love about Kim Deal- her past playing bass and writing songs in Pixies, The Breeders and The Amps, her Mid- West/ ciggie smoking voice and her all round coolness. On Nobody Loves You More she takes all of this, her alt rock/ indie songs and adds some slightly unexpected flavours, including string arrangements, a horn section and bossa nova. I read some reviews back in November when it was released but didn't go any further and when I stumbled across the title track last week I suddenly realised what I'd missed...

Nobody Loves You More

What a lovely song that is. The eleven songs on the album veer lyrically from reflections on her mother's Alzheimer's to the actor Rose Byrne to on Coast, a song written when deep in addiction issues and wishing she could enjoy the simple outdoors joy that the surfers she was watching were having. This song, Big Ben Beat, is more in the vein of some of her former bands...

Playing catch up with the album means that I've had the full eleven songs to digest in one go, a wonderful set of songs with Kim joined at various points by Kelley Deal, Steve Albini (who produced eight of the songs), Raymond McGinley from Teenage Fanclub, two of Savages (Fay Milton and Ayse Hassan) and Raconteur Jack Lawrence. 

Norris Triptych

Richard Norris is over forty years into a career and life in music and shows no signs of slowing up or losing inspiration. His Bandcamp subscription service pays off every month with the continuation of his Music For Healing series, a long running ambient/ deep listening music monthly release that is specifically designed to help listeners find peace and calm via twenty minute ambient pieces, all recorded live and in one take at 98 bpm. For 2025 the Music For Healing series has moved into oceans. March 2025 release is called Southern Deep and starts out with Mariana trench style depths followed by waves of synth chords. Find it here. It might help deal with the daily madness coming from the USA.

Richard's Oracle Sound dub outlet is up to volume four, an album out at the start of April with three slices of deep modern dubwise sounds released last week. The Oracle series has grown with each album, out digitally and on vinyl, and the latest is no slouch. Connected Dub is fractured, broken dub,slow motion drums and snakey bass and a very messed up vocal. Earthsea Dub goes slower and deeper still, waves lapping on the shores and a melodica wending its way. Flying Crane Dub is my favourite of the three cuts so far, a long sonorous piano note repeating over bass and drums dredged from the depths of the ocean. Oracle Sound Vol 4 is here. 

As if to prove he can do any electronic style easily and at will Richard has another release lined up for release next week, this one under the name of Dr No with Una Camille on vocals. Let Yourself Go is four four house, a main room banger with bass and bleeps that force the feet to move and Una's vocals rich and deep delight. Early 90s Manchester- style house music vibes. The EP comes with two Richard Norris mixes and a pair of Leo Zero remixes, one electro and one acidic, that do exactly what they promise, deep and dark fun, the Acid Mix particularly. Get Let Yourself Go here.