Cowboy Time

Mike Wilson records as 100 Poems, straight outta Kildare, Ireland. Since January 2024 he's released six albums of music sample based songs, edits and original compositions, straddling the wiggly line between Balearic, dub and all sorts of electronic delights, and earlier this year throwing some acid boogie, Americana and cosmic country and western into the stew. His newest album, Rodeo Disco, came out last week and continues down that route, with uptempo floor fillers, dub basslines and some more Western cowboy business. For Mike, music is about creating but also about facing life full on and in his own words, there to help 'shake off the black dog'.

Rodeo Disco opens with a pair of bangers, the Doobie Brothers cosmic funk house of Let The Music Play and an Elvis sampling Rockin' Dub Music, Elvis coming to us from an interview in 1953 being asked about juvenile delinquency over slo mo beats and whooshes. On Freedom Fears Nothing there are acoustic guitars and more slowed down tempos and Martin Luther King, recorded speaking the night before his death in Memphis, a speech that almost prefigures his assassination the following day.  Sister Dave's Rodeo Show goes Western and gospel- acid beats and a Brian Christopher vocal and La Danse De Mardi Gras spins us back onto the floor with fiddles and Cajun dance. 

The final two songs bring the album home in emotional fashion and demonstrate Mike's range. On Big Purple Hands there is a Seamus O'Rourke vocal, reading from his book Leaning On Gates, a novel from Leitrim with home truths, booze, bedsits in Dublin, work in New York and an author/ narrator finding out his place in the world. Mike's drums and synths provide a clattering backing that veers into cosmic territory, a splicing of genres and cultures that works really well, O'Rourke's conversational style making it sound like you're sitting in a pub listening to him while tow bands compete to be heard, a cosmic country and an Irish jig outfit. On the closing song Wand'rin' Dub, Lee Marvin's famous number one single, Wandr'in' Star, is reworked with Lee's gravelly voice embellished with waves, acid beats and bleeps, dub space and a ticking drum machine. Wandr'in' Star was played at the end of Joe Strummer's funeral which adds a certain poignancy to it- the anniversary of Joe's death is coming up next month. 

You can find Rodeo Disco at Bandcamp, a free/ pay what you want deal. Any monies raised are going to support two mental health charities close to Mike's heart. 

The Western theme on this 100 Poems album and my Soundtrack Saturday post last weekend have brought a cowboy and Western themed vibe to Bagging Area. There are lots of songs and artists with the word Cowboy in my music folders. Cowboy Junkies and Cowboys International have both featured here before and Midnight Cowboy was a Soundtrack Saturday post earlier this year as was Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. Here are some more cowboys...

Cowboy George

Cowboy George is from The Fall's Your Future Our Clutter, their twenty seventh studio album, released in 2010 (which also featured a cover of Wanda Jackson's rockabilly Western song Funnel Of Love). Taut slide guitar, rumbling bass and clattering drums with the inimitable Mark E. Smith in rampant form with lines about low fat Limeys, broken bottles and Robin redbreast. 

Cowboys Are Square

It's been ages since I posted any Billy Childish, like Mark E Smith a total one off with a prodigious work rate and idiosyncratic worldview. Cowboys Are Square was on Thee Headcoats 1990 album The Kids Are Al Square: This Is Hip! In the last few months Billy has reunited Thee Headcoats and released a new album. They've probably recorded a new one in the time it took to write this blogpost. Billy's anti- cowboy obviously, cowboys are square, Indians are best.

Cowboys

Cowboys was the opening song on Portishead's second album. Claustrophobic and dense, hip hop/ jazz noir with Beth's lyrics eviscerating the British establishment. 

Cowboys And Indians

Cowboys And Indians is Pearl Harbour and The Explosions, a 1980 rock 'n' roll single in the Jerry Lee Lewis style, and also from the album Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost Too. Pearl arrived in London, had a relationship with Kosmo Vinyl, married Paul Simonon, supported The Clash and got members of The Clash, The Blockheads and Whirlwind to play on the album along with BJ Cole. 

Hey Cowboy

Lee Hazlewood recorded Cowboy In Sweden in 1970, a collection of country/ cowboy songs but done with that psychedelic, cinematic sound Lee pioneered. Nina Lizell sings with Lee on Hey Cowboy. 

Paul Simonon is a big Lee Hazlewood fan and was married to Pearl Harbour. Lee Marvin was played at Joe Strummer's funeral and is on the final track on 100 Poems' Rodeo Disco. The connections are everywhere. Sometimes these things just come together as I write them. 

Outside Another Yellow Moon

A conversation about Tom Waits last weekend directed me to this track by Akira The Don, a track with a borrowed vocal, Tom Waits reading Charles Bukowski's The Laughing Heart, a poem about existence, fulfillment and finding light among the darkness- 'Your life is your life/ Don't let it be clubbed into dank submission/ Be on the watch/ There are ways out/ There is light somewhere...'

I read Bukowski's Ham On Rye in the summer, a semi- autobiographical novel based partly on his own teenage and young adulthood in Los Angeles in the 1930s and 40s- it's a grim read in many ways, the young Henry Chinaski not fitting in at school or the private college his father sends him to, and he pulls no punches in his first person description of school brutality, domestic violence, masturbation, alcohol, terrible acne and indifferent doctors and the growing misanthropy of Chinaski (a thinly veiled Bukowski). That Bukowski wrote an existential poem that concludes there is light somewhere is remarkable given how dark much of his writing is. 

The Laughing Heart

Akira The Don adds piano, a jazz club feel and some very lazy hip hop drums, all very sympathetic to Mr. Waits. I then remembered that 100 Poems used the Waits vocal for Song For Claire (Your Life Is Your Life) on their 2024 album Balearic As A System Of Belief. 

It got me looking through my collection for more Tom Waits. I've posted this before but it's always worth a re- post, Tom Waits' Closing Time spliced with Allen Ginsberg reading his poem America, a Ginsberg peak, the young Allen looking around at the nation and his life- 'America/ I've given you all and now I'm nothing'. 

America features the use of a racial slur which was part of Ginsberg's America and very much not acceptable now. 

America (Closing Time)

Tom Waits is in a way one of the last links to the Beats, an artist in the Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs tradition. His bohemian life and scenes from the underworld/ underbelly of American society street poetry seems very 20th century now, a dying art form in some ways. I can't think of many artists existing in the same milieu- those that do, Jim Jarmusch say or Bob Dylan (also a Beat inspired writer), won't be around forever. David Lynch departed earlier this year- his music fitted into a Waitsian world. 

I don't have a huge amount of Tom Waits, I never committed to going the full hog. I used to have Swordfishtrombones on cassette but I didn't replace it after my cassette collection got slimmed down in the 90s, probably something I should rectify. I had a copy of Mule Variations too but can't find it now. Mule Variations came out in 1999- I was amazed it's that long ago. I always loved this piece of weirdness and neighbourly paranoia, What's He Building?

I do have Rain Dogs, Tom's 1985 album, often lauded as one of his best. It's got the full Waits range of carnival music, Weimar oompah, jazz, experimental rock and blues, New Orleans funeral marches, various styles of outsider music stitched into a whole. Rain Dogs was written by Waits in a basement room in Lower Manhattan in a two month period in the mid- 80s. He wandered round the city with a tape recorder taping sounds and noises which he then layered guitars, marimba, trombone, piano, accordion and banjo on top of and made drumbeats out of banging pieces of furniture, drawers from cupboards and cabinets. Sometimes the album's madness, variation and cacophony is too much- I have to be in the mood for it. But peppered among the underbelly pieces and bursts of chaotic noise are some of his best loved songs too- Time, Hang Down Your Head, Downtown Train. 

Clap Hands is the second song on Rain Dogs, with uneven pots and pans percussion and Tom narrating the lives of New York's dispossessed.

Clap Hands

Hang Down Your Head was released as a single, a song with a proper structure that nodded to his earlier work, Waits at his most direct and songwriterly, that gravel voice accompanied by electric guitar. 

Hang Down Your Head

9th And Hennepin finds itself in the gutter with broken umbrellas and dead birds, a girl with a tattooed tear and the train going by, an NYC Beat Generation blues poem. 

9th And Hennepin

Downtown Train is one of his most famous songs, covered by Bob Seger, Rod Stewart and Everything But The Girl. Tom's song has Robert Quine playing a wonderful electric guitar part (Quine turned up at Bagging Area last week playing guitar on Lou Reed's The Blue Mask). Downtown Train has become a classic and for good reason.

Downtown Train

Feel The Steering Wheel

Ice Machines: The Album came out last week, ten tracks from five producers from Ireland with 100 Poems represented by a pair of new recordings- a cover of Warm Leatherette and a new track Komputer. Warm Leatherette is something of a foundational moment in post- punk/ synth- pop, Mute's Daniel Miller as The Normal and a 1978 single that set JG Ballard's 19973 novel Crash to bleak, squelchy, dystopian, industrial synth. It was originally the B-side of the single, T.V.O.D. being the lead track but it quickly become the one that gathered the most attention. 

Warm Leatherette

It's a track that I always want to play next to Fad Gadget's Back To Nature, a similarly singular groundbreaking record, again lo- fi industrial synth with a post- apocalyptic feel. 

Back To Nature

It's a brave song choice for a cover and Mike Wilson of 100 Poems takes a slightly different approach- the synths are still ominous and foreboding but the vocal (by Georgie) is more human, less detached. 

The second 100 Poems track is Komputer,a love song to the Commodore 64 and 8- bit home programming. The Commodore 64 was the best selling desktop computer of all time, an origin story for the modern world. Mike's track fizzes and buzzes, clunky graphics and the whir of the cassette machine re- animated while an American woman talks us through the joys and simplicity of home computing.

The ten track album Ice Machines can be found at Bandcamp, name your own price with all proceeds going to the Musical Youth Foundation. As well as the pair of 100 Poems tracks there are contributions from Circuit3, Empire State Human, PolyDROID and Amalgamated Wonders Of The World and covers of Simon and Garfunkel, The Carpenters and Depeche Mode. 

Let The Horse Run Free

Seamus Heaney has been in the air around me recently- an article at The Atlantic by Caitlin Flanagan, our trip to Belfast two weeks ago, Mike Wilson's 100 Poems, and the quote on Heaney's gravestone that inspired me when we were looking for pointers about how to go about Isaac's gravestone ('walk on air against your better judgement'). I bought a copy of 100 Poems second hand, a self- explanatory selection of Heaney's poems chosen by the Heaney family with the plan that I'd read one a day. I haven't started yet, but will soon. It's always interesting when a second hand book comes with a handwritten inscription...

Questions eh? What happened to Sophie and James? Why did Sophie get rid of this book? Or did someone else? If nothing else, it gives the book a life, a past. 

By coincidence Mike Wilson's 100 Poems have a new album out. Mike named his musical project after Heaney's poetry collection and, a fellow Irishman, is a fan of Heaney's work. Mike took the 'walk on air against your better judgement' as an inspiration for his music, the casting off of concerns and doubts  and just going for it, creating, making music. Last year 100 Poems released three albums, all of which contain some wonderful music, music that lit up 2024- blissed out Balearica, tunes for sundown and sun up, spaced out dub and wide eyed electronic songs. He followed those three with a live album this year. You can find them all at the 100 Poems Bandcamp. 

Yesterday Mike put the first fruits of his latest album onto YouTube a song called My Wicked Son, with an album- Let The Horse Run Free- out tomorrow. Not content to stand still Mike's dug out the acoustic instruments, guitars, fiddles and banjo, and taken inspiration from the Old West, an album of electronic beats crossed with country, cosmic/ Balearic Americana. It's also an album that deals with personal issues, stands up squarely to the past, to the black dog of depression and mental health issues. When the album goes onto Bandcamp tomorrow, any proceeds will go to mental health charities, seven songs are infused with Mike's wide screen sound and attitude. 

Opener My Wicked Son sets Mike's new stall out- distorted vocals, a backdrop of fuzz and FX, the vocal snapping into focus as the singer tells of being on the road again. Harmonica fades in, a guitar squeals, the singer asks for mercy and the bluesy cowboy stomp kicks in. As the drums kick and pound, a synth appears, a 303 whooshes in, the saloon bar piano player picks out a one fingered melody, everything all at once... a song destined for dance floors. 

The album's title track follows, the lonesome wail of a steam train, hand drums and then a slow motion groove with guitars, After the breakdown things go left, the acid and the cowboy yodel playing off against each other, synths building up a head of steam, an eight minute rodeo. Johnny Plays Guitar is a torch song, female vocal and burbling acid house balladry, the Johnny Guitar of the song a nod to the 1954 Joan Crawford film. 

She Don't Want Me Know combines a chuggy stomp and echo- drenched banjo and a croaky vocal from an old timer. It comes after The Ballad Of Josey Wales, a song littered with film samples in the way early Big Audio Dynamite songs were. Sister Rave pounds in with thumping late 60s drums and a vintage sounding vocal, the sound of 60s soul crossed with an acidic 303, hands raised in celebration. At the end we left on Big Dub Candy Mountain, the squelch of the bottom end countered by cowboy blues, Mike updating a 1928 Harry McClintock song, the lyrics from the view of a hobo eternally on the road looking for paradise, a song reverberating down the railway tracks from a hundred years ago to now. 

NYE 2024 Mix

Staying in has been proclaimed as the new going out many times now. New Year's Eve is often the most overrated night out of the year but in the past we had fun going on NYE and I'm sure they'll be loads of people who do tonight. We have no plans to do anything major and hence will be in by the time 2025 comes around at midnight. In place of a crowded dance floor here's a Bagging Area NYE 2024 mix, starts out dubby, then goes Tricky, and then thumpy before calming down slightly and finishing with the return of a long gone 60s icon. 

Everything on it was released this year and it's quite David Holmes and Hardway Bros heavy (which probably explains a lot of what I've listened to this year). I wanted to find room for several other tracks but also wanted to keep it down to under 80 minutes for those of you who still burn things to CD to play in the car (that may just be me). I tried to fit Acid Klaus in but couldn't make it work, Hardway Bros' Murky didn't find a place (and should have) and there's one segue where it's a bit off- Audacity isn't really for mixing more sequencing, and sometimes my patience gets replaced by my 'it'll do' attitude. But if you want a shuffle to some chuggy, leftfield, acidic, dubby, thumpy and ultimately life affirming electronic music at some point tonight, it might do the trick. 

NYE24 Mix

• Red Snapper and David Harrow: Hold My Hand Up
• Theis Thaws: Fly To Ceiling (David Holmes Mix)
• Silvertooth: Shut Um Down (A Dub From Outer Space)
• Ammonite: You Don't Know Me (David Holmes Remix)
• C.A.R.: Anzu (Hardway Bros Remix)
• Peak High: Dance Hall Days (Hardway Bros Remix)
• Causeway: Dancing With Shadows (Marshall's Club Mix)
• Ben Hunt: Shimmering Lights (Rude Audio Remix)
• Lisa Moorish: Sylvia (David Holmes Remix)
• Raxon: Your Fault
• Puerto Montt City Orchestra: Hey You (10:40 Remix)
• 100 Poems: Dubmobalearicswithmybreaksman

David Harrow celebrated turning 60 in 2024 by releasing music every month. One of those releases was a four track EP called Tight Chest with jazz/ techno/ dub/ surf legends Red Snapper. This was the lead track, a wonderful piece of 2024 dubbiness that should have got more attention than it did. 

Theis Thaws was an album that saw the return of Tricky (Adrian Thaws) with French producer Mike Theis and singer Rosa Rocca- Serra. David Holmes' remix, as everyone said when it came out, was approximately three minutes too short but even at only three minutes eighteen seconds it packs a powerful if slightly paranoid punch. 

Silvertooth, from South London, released Shut Um Down in November, a cover of  Gil Scott Heron song, partly inspired by Sean Johnston's continuing ALFOS parties. It came in a variety of versions with two ALFOS aimed dubs- rolling pianos, chuggy dubby beats, and a lovely low slung groove.

Ammonite makes very ethereal music, layers of voice and gossamer drones. She remixed Holmes' Emotionally Clear into an ambient track. Holmes returned the favour by pumping Ammonite's You Don't Know Me up into an electronic banger. 

C.A.R.'s Anzu lit up late 2023. The remixes came out in 2024, courtesy of GLOK and Hardway Bros. Sean's Hardway Bros remixes have been in full flow for the last few years and the standard is uniformly high. This one and the Hardway Bros Dub were on heavy rotation at Bagging Area back at the start of the year.

Peak High's cover of Wang Chung's Dance Hall Days was a delight, coming after the equally superb Was That All It Was in 2023. The Hardway Bros remix dubs things down, turning the 80s pop down a bit, and finds that BPM sweet spot that Sean knows very well.

Causeway are on Chris Massey's Manchester label Sprechen but the duo (Marshall Watson and Alison Rae) are based in California,a world away from South Manchester. Dancing With Shadows is the 80s teen film anthem you missed, the sounds playing in the disco where Molly Ringwald has a revelation while dancing with the wrong boy. It came with a slew of remixes- the one here is Marshall's own. 

Ben Hunt's Shimmering Lights came out last month on Paisley Dark with a range of remixes, all of which hit the spot. Rude Audio remixes are often in the 98 BPM dub area. This one whacks it up and heads for end of the night Underworld vibes, the vocal sample, 'I see patterns in everything', twisting around like Karl Hyde in the mid- 90s. 

Lisa Moorish's comeback single in April was a beautiful electro- pop tribute to Sylvia Plath. David Holmes' remix did exactly what you'd want from a Holmes remix. 

Raxon's Your Fault was an autumn '24 highlight although I didn't catch on until later. It is fabulously wonky dance floor euphoria from Cologne, sounds shifting in and out, everything shifting and moving as if the floor is giving way. 

Puerto Montt City Orchestra's Hey You came out on Brighton's Higher Love label, the home of many, many good releases. It's a cover of 80s indie band 14 Iced Bears Hay Fever with original singer Rob Sekula returning to do the vocals. On the 10:40 remix Jesse sent this woozy 2024 c86 song through a Spiritualized filter, everyone involved laid back in the sun. 

100 Poems have released three albums this year, each one stuffed full of beautiful, brilliant tunes and a open minded anything goes attitude to making music and to life. Mike Wilson named the band after a collection of Seamus Heaney poems and the inscription on Heaney's headstone- 'walk on air against your better judgement'- is what the music is all about. On the third of the three albums, Balearic As A System Of Belief, Mike used the voice of Jim Morrison, a late 60s interview where he was talking about the future of music and how it would be electronic. And there may be a better way to see 2025 in than by listening to the utterances of the Lizard King repurposed for 2024/ 5 but I can't think of one at the moment. 

Happy New Year everyone- in or out, have a good one. 

Music For Warmer Climes

Friday 6th December. It doesn't get much less Balearic than northern England in early December, the same awful Christmas songs on rotation in every shop, pub and public place, dark all day and wet or cold- or wet and cold. Thankfully there are people out there releasing music to transport us from our wintry festive hell to somewhere much warmer. A Mediterranean round up for today, a trio of late 2024 Balearica transmissions.

We'll start with Cantoma and a single that came out at the end of November that has become a proper earworm for me. There were 250 hand numbered 7"  singles but alas they've all gone so it's digital only. First Nothing (Noche Espanola Remix) rumbles in with warm prodding bass and then some clipped, muted guitar notes, fluttering synths, long washes of synth chords, piano... It's a mid- tempo sundowner, the perfect shuffling, head nodding groove. On the flip Phil Mison provides an ambient mix, a gorgeous stripped back version. You can get both at Bandcamp. 

Over at Apiento's Bandcamp there's a new remix of his 2010 classic The Orange Place- it came out on vinyl in late November, the original version paired with Castro's Cosmic Orange Dub. You can get both digitally here. Castro's Cosmic Orange Dub is eight and a half minutes of downtempo Balearic splendour, ideal for home listening, a dubbed out version that gets quite intense, the rhythms picking up, FX swirling around and the eastern melody lines drifting in and out. The original mix is a much loved and much played track round these parts and was one I think I first heard on Andrew Weatherall's 2012 compilation Masterpiece (which hasn't featured in the Bagging Area V.A. Saturday slot yet but really should).

Lastly Mike Wilson's 100 Poems has lit up 2024 three times with a triptych of albums, all of which have featured at this blog. Today there's another new 100 Poems album, this one called Love because as Mike says 'love is what the world needs more than anything'. The album is out at Bandcamp today, a live album recorded at a showcase gig in Dublin in October. Mike released Song For Claire (Your Life Is Your Life) onto Soundcloud a few days ago- you can listen here. The song has taken on a new life for Mike since he recorded it as a tribute to a friend, Claire, who sadly died earlier this year. The words are from a Charles Bukowski poem called The Laughing Heart- 'Your life is your life/ Don't let it be clubbed into dank submission/ Be on the watch/ There are ways out/ There is light somewhere/ It may not be much light but/ It beats the darkness'. At this point in darkest December we could all do with a little light.  

Another Bagging Area Mix For Tak Tent Radio

I've done another mix for Tak Tent Radio, an internet radio station broadcasting out of Scotland for several years now and host to a wonderfully diverse and obscure selection of music. This is my twelfth mix for Tak Tent, an hour of tunes entirely music from 2024 and focussing very much on the dubwise sounds before pitching things up at the end with a pair of twisted dancefloor bangers. Listen to it at Tak Tent or at Mixcloud.

Tracklist

•          Coyote: OMG
•          Five Green Moons: One Lost Moon
•          The Jonny Halifax Invocation: The Mountain Dub
•          Richard Norris and Jon Carter: Ceefax (Jon Carter Due South Dub)
•          Puerto Montt City Orchestra: Hey You (10:40 Remix)
•          Pandit Pam Pam: Pass A Wish (Jezebell’s 50 Ways Mix)
•          100 Poems: Come, Hear Me Now
•          Fat White Family: Bullet Of Dignity (Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve Remix)
•          Acid Klaus ft Philly Piper: Aerodromes (David Holmes Remix)

Balearic As A System Of Belief

Mike Wilson's Dublin based 100 Poems has already released two albums this year- Everything's Balearic When You Believe and Everything's Possible When You Balearic. Last week he released a third, Balearic As A System Of Belief. Mike shared one of the tracks with me in an unfinished form a couple of months ago but the work he's done since then and the music he's created for this third album is something else, going beyond the day- glo, downtempo, feelgood, anything goes songs from the first two and heading off in new directions. 

Mike's in love with the creative process- the empty page, the blank track- and the sense that anything is possible, the process of sitting down and starting with nothing but ending with something a little while later. Balearic As A System Of Belief covers the range of human emotion, from love and euphoria to grief and sorrow with Mike's irrepressible love of life shining through on each and every one of the seven tracks. The opener, In This Cosmos Everything Has A Place, takes the words of Sadhguru and a speech about the interconnectedness of nature, insects, worms, people and animals, the planet's survival, the solar system, the smallness of the human race, and the entire cosmos, and sets them against some widescreen acid house, throbbing and whooshing synths, piano, big drums, sirens, timpani, rattling hi hats, and a dozen more elements besides. 

The second song, Elonna, She Brings The Sun is blissed out and wide eyed, with sunshine dappled acoustic guitars, sweeping strings and ecstatic, deeply in love vocals. It's followed by Song For Claire (Your Life Is Your Life), a song dedicated to and named after a recently lost friend, Claire, and borrows Tom Waits reading Charles Bukowski's The Laughing Heart- 'Your life is your life/ Don't let it be clubbed into dank submission/ Be on the watch/ There are ways out/ There is light somewhere'. Strings and guitars, synths and horns, whispers and tears, and 'a tiny piece of acid house has gone to heaven...'

The use of sampled voices continues with the next two songs. On Come, Hear Me Now, rumbling rhythms and the hiss of hi- hat bring a different feel to the album, some darkness and moodiness thunder in- until a flute breaks in and suddenly we're off again, up in the blue skies, a guitar line singing the lead. The voice, when it arrives, is that of Mikey Dread (from Break Down The Walls in 1980), bringing the reggae toasting and Jamaican vibes. Dubmobalearicswithmybreaksman moves us from Jamaica to Los Angeles and Jim Morrison in 1969, discussing blues and folk and American music, with a skittering drum beat, chopped up sounds, and distorted guitar. 'Rock is kind of dying out', says Jim, 'soon, they might be relying heavily on electronics and machines' (an interview and sample that made an appearance coincidentally earlier this year on Jezebell's Weekend Machines EP).

From the heavy sounds of Dubmobalearicswithmybreaksman Mike changes gear again on Peace, Love And Dancing, straight ahead party music, Sly And The Family Stone style, with big analogue bottom end, clipped guitar and 70s funk horns. Balearic As A System Of Belief comes to a close with Until Next Summer, acoustic guitar and the pitter- patter of a drum machine, echo and an angelic vocal, ending with the fading sound of a lone trumpet. 

The pair of albums 100 Poems released earlier this year both had loads of highpoints, with tunes to enjoy and a feelgood vibe. This latest album moves Mike's sound on again, with a wider range of sounds and a different feel, the sonic and emotional net being cast wider and further. 

Balearic As A System Of Belief is at Bandcamp where you can pay what you want- as Mike says, 'give what you can afford, if you can't afford anything, no problem please download and enjoy this album and I wish you better times'. Any monies raised will be donated to Women's Aid and The Suzy Lamplugh Trust

Walk On Air Against Your Better Judgement

Some uptempo positivity for Friday and two new releases that should encourage some head nodding, foot tapping, beers in the garden and a general feeling that all is well. Back at the start of the year 100 Poems released a seven track album called Everything's Balearic When You Believe, an irrepressible album from the eternally upbeat Mike Wilson, the man behind 100 Poems. Mike is from Ireland and dropped the first 100 Poems album onto an unsuspecting internet, the sound of soul, psych, pop, funk, Balearic pop with a dash of acid house/ dance music. He followed it last week with a follow up, Everything's Possible When You Balearic, seven more slices of sun drenched sonics and forward facing music (six new songs and a rmeix of Tambores En Benirras' Generadora De Rayos). The album kicks off with applause, a crowd clapping and then long synth chords before a big voice takes us into Gettin' Down With George, 80s soul funk guitar licks and images of neon lit Top Of The Pops. 

All remaining five originals are filled with Mike's signature touches. Believe (Everything Is Possible) is a slow paced sundowner, two voices, one whispering, the other oohing, acoustic guitar, padding drums and horns- ascending, life affirming horns. 

Mike's song titles and sound are perfectly synced- Into The Light, When Night Begins To Shine, and Warm Breeze On Our Face (Like A Hot Summer Sigh) all sound like they should. It's got moments of joy, an album to play in the car with the sun out and the windows down. Available at Bandcamp at a Pay What You Want deal with any proceeds to Jigsaw and Shelter. 100 Poems is named after the collected poetry of Seamus Heaney, the most celebrated Irish poet and playwright. On his headstone is the epitaph, 'Walk on air against your better judgement', a line about throwing off inhibitions and abandoning caution, something which I think Mike does with each song he records. 

Also out recently, yesterday in fact, is the latest EP on Duncan Gray's Tici Taci- Tail Feather by Rule Six. There are two versions, the original version of Tail Feather and a Meat Katie remix. The first is a slow motion chugger with bass and guitar, rim shots and descending synth notes, squiggles and bounce. 

The Meat Katie Remix is lower slung and squelchier, ideal for playing an hour or two later than the first, when the floor's packed and everyone's forgotten themselves a little, inhibitions left behind and cares forgotten for a while.  

Paint The Sky In Dreams And Patterns

Back in January an album by 100 Poems came out, seven tracks brought together as Everything's Balearic When You Believe. In the middle of January it brought some relief from the cold and dark days of midwinter, an album its creator Mike Wilson describes as one of 'joy, happiness and positive vibrations'.  Now in late March, as the evenings are lighter, the air sometimes smells and feels like spring is about to spring and we have the promise of the clocks going forward at the weekend, it feels even more like Mike's description than it did two months ago. 100 Poems are from Dublin, not the first place that comes to mind when the word Balearic is mentioned. But if the spirit of Balearic music as played by Alfredo and other DJs in Ibiza's open air clubs in the 1980s is that you can play whatever you like, there are no rules, if it sounds good, play it, then there's every reason to expect find it in Dublin as anywhere else.

Everything's Balearic When You Believe is seven tracks long, open minded and expressive, drawing from dub and pop, house and downtempo, sundowners and swimming pools, blissed out and beatific and filled with magic. It's available at Bandcamp at a name your own price deal. 

Paint The Sky In Dreams And Patterns opens with the sounds of a gig, an open air free festival type gig. Then a gently psyche guitar part weaves in, building and rising, drums thump in, horns and keys come in layers and we are indeed painting the sky in dreams and patterns.