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

Bagging Area Tak Tent Mix Nine

My latest hour long mix for Tak Tent Radio went live at the weekend. Tak Tent have been broadcasting out of Scotland on the internet since June 2020, with a range of contributors including the legendary Richard Youngs. The latest Bagging Area mix is my ninth for Tak Tent and contains solely music from this year. You can listen to it here or directly at Mixcloud. Don't let them tell you there's no good new music any more. 

• Alex Kassian: Lifestream
• Marshall Watson: High Desert (Seahawks High Sky Remix)
• Whitelands: Setting Sun (AR Kane Initiation Dub)
• Dot Allison: Unchanged (GLOK Remix)
• Dicky Continental: Simon Says (Congagong rework)
• African Head Charge: Passing Clouds
• Coyote: After All These Years
• Steve Queralt and Michael Smith: Chaldean Oracle (GLOK Remix)
• Jo Sims: Bass- The Final Frontier (David Holmes Remix)
• Richard Norris: The Third Day
• JIM: Still River Flow (Generalisation Dub)

Monday's Long Song

One of the albums of the summer has been JIM's Love Makes Magic, a ten songs that marry sunkissed acoustic guitar and piano with Crosby, Stills and Nash harmonies, a Balearic record in feel and sound. There were some dubs a while back that stretched the song Still River Flow into a new direction. Now there are a pair of Crooked Man remixes of the song Phoenix, the Crooked Goth mix and the Crooked Fire mix. Phoenix (Crooked Goth) is out now at Bandcamp (and to order on 12" vinyl), a timeshifting, warped eleven minute opus, the acoustic guitar and vocal isolated and then joined by the dull thump of a drum. The vocal gets echoed out of shape, bouncing around the mix. At two and half minutes a skippity rhythm kicks in and it all goes further into the blue, sunburnt and fried. At five minutes in there's a drop out that leads to some cavernous reverb and vocal and then a lovely, long slow rebuild. The second remix, Crooked Fire, is also almost eleven minutes long but not available until Friday. 

The original album version of Phoenix is a delight, an after hours, after sun song, with guitar, strings and a lovely, FXed vocal. 

Phoenix

Crooked Man (Richard Barrett/ Parrot) is from Sheffield, half of bleep rave outfit Sweet Exorcist and the man who produced Roisin Murphy's Roisin Machine and then remixed the entire thing into Crooked Machine back in 2021. One of the stopping off points in between those two projects was his 2018 album Crooked House, an album of house/ deep and bleep house/ bent out of shape house. 

Make Up

Edit: I should of course have mentioned that Phoenix is a cover of a song by The Cult, from 1985's Love album- the one with She Sells Sanctuary, one of the '80s finest full on goth- rock songs.  

Still River Flow

There's a lot of new music in my space at the moment. I slept on this one for a while but have been hitting play and replay a lot since the first time I spun it a couple of weeks ago- thanks to Dan for tipping me off. 

JIM is songwriter, musician and DJ Jim Baron- his background includes being one half of Crazy P- and this album stems from lockdown, when life became more introspective and solitary. JIM's solo album, the unashamedly hippy- ish record titled Love Makes Magic, is a joy from start to finish. Balearic finger picked and strummed acoustic guitars. Harmonised, multi- tracked vocals that invariably bring to mind the sound of Crosby, Stills and Nash. Piano parts from late 80s house music. The subtle but funky push of drums from dance music. Ten perfectly paced and pitched songs. 

Still River Flow is a beauty at the heart of the album, piano carrying the good times feel from the start of the song over percussion and drums. It's intended to sound like summer, carefree and exuberant, with the wind in its hair and the sun on its face. 

Still River Flow also exists in reworked in an extended dub version courtesy of Damian Harris (aka Midfield General), the Generalisation Dub, stretched out and stripped down, available only as a download at the moment here. When the strings come in, over the bubbling bass, sweet backing vox, guitar and synths, it's almost too much. Then there's a piano breakdown and, frankly, I'm in pieces at how blissed out and impossibly good it all sounds.