Daniel Avery And The Early Bird

No forty minute Sunday mix from me today- I've been away this week and haven't had much time. Instead, enjoy this sublime two hours from Daniel Avery and The Early Bird Show at NTS from last week. Daniel plays an early morning selection of songs and tracks, joining the dots between ambient, indie, trip hop and techno, with PJ Harvey, some of his own music, Sinead O'Connor, Two Lone Swordsmen, Holden Federico, George Clanton, James K, Deftones, Death In Vegas, Everything But The Girl, Skee Mask, Smashing Pumpkins, Interpol, Solvent, and Nulifer Yanya all making appearances. The full tracklist is here and you can listen here. Two hours well spent. 

I've posted two different Daniel Avery mixes previously. Both are still available to download. In November 2022 I put together a forty minute mix of remixes Daniel has done of other artists- it's quite intense and thumpy. 

Forty Minutes Of Daniel Avery Remixes 

• Enfant Sauvage: 58500 (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Saint Etienne: Fonteyn (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Leaving Laurel: Winter In The Woods (Daniel Avery Remix)
• David Holmes: Hope Is The Last Thing To Die (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Mandy, Indiana: Alien 3 (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Joshua James: Amber Rush (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Confidence Man: Feels Like A Different Thing (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Daniel Avery: Lone Swordsman (Chris Carter Remix)

Previous to that, in February 2022 when I started this Sunday mix series, the second forty minute mix I posted was a Daniel Avery one, thirty minutes of echo, reverb, FX and emotive ambient/ techno.

Half An Hour Of Daniel Avery

• Together In Static
• Illusion Of Time (Teodor Wolgers rework)
• Petrol Blue
• Lone Swordsman (Chris Carter Remix)
• Into The Voice Of Stillness
• A Story In E5
• Midnight Sun
• Lone Swordsman

Forty Minutes Of Daniel Avery Remixes

Daniel Avery's new album Ultra Truth came out on Friday, a record already sounding like a contender for album of the year. Across fifteen tracks Daniel's cavernous, euphoric/ anxiety inducing ambient/ industrial/ techno has been fine tuned into an emotive and immersive album. Back in January when I started this Sunday mix series the second week was an Avery half hour mix. In way of a follow up and to celebrate the release of Ultra Truth I thought I'd do a second Avery half hour but this time remixes, Daniel's of other people and one of Daniel, all dating from the last couple of years. The sounds that are trademark Avery- the reverb, the drums, the wall of fog and distortion, the thump of the kick drum, the wobbly synths- are present in many of these which range from fairly languid to full on 'panel beaters from Prague' techno (quote courtesy of Andrew Weatherall, who is never very far away). 

Forty Minutes Of Daniel Avery Remixes

• Enfant Sauvage: 58500 (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Saint Etienne: Fonteyn (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Leaving Laurel: Winter In The Woods (Daniel Avery Remix)
• David Holmes: Hope Is The Last Thing To Die (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Mandy, Indiana: Alien 3 (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Joshua James: Amber Rush (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Confidence Man: Feels Like A Different Thing (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Daniel Avery: Lone Swordsman (Chris Carter Remix)

Tak Tent Mix Pour Lundi

No long song today, a mix instead. Tak Tent Radio is an internet radio station broadcasting out of Scotland with mixes and shows from an array of contributors and regular guests. Some time ago I was asked if I'd like to provide an hour of music for Tak Tent and have since been back four times. The latest Bagging Area Tak Tent mix went up on Saturday and can be found here. More ambient, instrumental and Balearic sounds segued together in a way that I hope is pleasing and semi- competent. I've posted quite a few of the tracks in the mix here in recent times. 

• Underworld: Dark & Long (Most ‘Ospitable Mix)
• David Holmes and Jon Hopkins featuring Stephen Rea: Elsewhere Anchises
• William Alfred Sergeant: Circles
• Chris Carter: Poptone
• William Orbit: Wordsworth
• Sonic Boom/ Spectrum: True Love Will Find You In The End
• Steve Cobby: 45ft. Tide
• Gabriel Yared: C’est Le Vent, Betty
• Andy Bell: When The Lights Go Down
• The Vendetta Suite: Purple Haze, Yellow Sunrise (David Holmes Remix)
• Projections: Original Cell (Coyote Deep State Remix)
• Coyote: The Outsider

For some reason while putting it together the Gabriel Yared track suggested itself to me- I have no idea why. C'est Le Vent, Betty is from the soundtrack to the film Betty Blue. I'm sure you remember Betty Blue...

Betty Blue was released in 1988, directed by Jean- Jacques Beineix and starring Beatrice Dalle as Betty and Jean- Hugues Anglade as Zorg. Zorg lives in a beach house on the coast, making a living as a handyman while trying to become a writer. Betty arrives and turns his life upside down, setting fire to a beach house, stabbing a customer at a pizzeria with a fork and a sharp, painful descent into depression and hospitalisation. The film's first half, all young love and impulsiveness, sex and bohemian lifestyle, contrast sharply with the horrors of the second half. According to the director the film's two stars became very much intertwined, a relationship that went beyond acting. 'We didn't know if they were in the movie anymore', he said. Which puts the film's opening scene, a lengthy sex scene, in a different light. The soundtrack was by Gabriel Yared, a Lebanese composer and pianist and works as a listen in its own right. As well as the track on my mix above, this pair are a good way to start the week. 

Betty Et Zorg

37.2 le Matin

Poptone

Chris Carter, ex- Throbbing Gristle and half of Chris and Cosey, has a back catalogue that I can never seem to get much further than scratching the surface with. Whenever I look there's more- and it's all equally worthy of exploring. Last year he released three volumes of Electronic Ambient Remixes, reworkings and new versions of tracks from his past. The first volume contains updated and remixed versions of a 1991 album The Spaces Between, itself a collection of tracks recorded between 1977 and 1980 while Throbbing Gristle were still active and the TG Industrial Records studio was a place for experimentation in analogue sound. Poptone (nothing to do with PiL) is five and a half minutes of wonderful ambient drones, warm sounds and dubby delays, and despite sounding minimal and murky at first, when you really listen in there's many layers of sound and so much more happening than it seems. 

Poptone

Half An Hour Of Avery

The second in my new series of half hour mixes based around a single artist. Last week was Mogwai, this week brings Daniel Avery and just over thirty minutes of music from the last couple of years. Daniel's sound has evolved into a ghostly, emotive but very physical ambient/ industrial/ techno. Synths, drum machines, FX and bottomless, cavernous echo with melodies dancing about over the drones and rhythms. I can't recommend his music highly enough- the albums Love + Light and Together In Static, his collaboration with Alessandro Cortini and the Lone Swordsman and other single releases are all essential.  

Half An Hour Of Daniel Avery

Tracklist

• Together In Static
• Illusion Of Time (Teodor Wolgers rework)
• Petrol Blue
• Lone Swordsman (Chris Carter Remix)
• Into The Voice Of Stillness
• A Story In E5
• Midnight Sun
• Lone Swordsman

Lone Swordsman Again

Chris Carter's remix of Daniel Avery's Lone Swordsman came out on 10" vinyl two weeks ago, a beautifully crafted slow mo reworking of the original with Daniel's melody line peaking through, set against a dreamy ambient/ techno murk. There's a distinctly otherworldly feel to it, a five minute taste of a future that never quite happened. Get it here. 

Isolation Mix Seven

An hour and a minute of stitched together songs for Saturday. This one caused me a bit of a headache at times. It was an attempt I think at first to try to join some dots together in terms of feel or sounds, with a nod to Kraftwerk following Florian Schneider's death last week. There was an earlier version that went quite techno/dance for the last twenty minutes but I then went back and did the end section again. I'm still not sure I got it quite right, and think I may have tried to cover too many bases stylistically, but my self imposed deadline was approaching so 'publish and be damned', as the Duke of Wellington said. Although he wasn't dealing with the business of trying to get spaghetti westerns, indie dance, shoegaze and leftfield electronic music to sit together in one mix was he?

Ennio Morricone: Watch Chimes (From ‘For A Few Dollars More’)

David Sylvian and Robert Fripp: Endgame

Talk Talk: Life’s What You Make It

Saint Etienne: Kiss And Make Up (Midsummer Madness Mix)

Spacemen 3: Big City (Everyone I Know Can Be Found Here)

Beyond The Wizards Sleeve: Diagram Girl (Beyond The Wizards Sleeve Re- Animation)

My Bloody Valentine: Don’t Ask Why

Jon Hopkins and Kelly Lee Owens: Luminous Spaces

Kraftwerk: Numbers

Death In Vegas: Consequences Of Love (Chris and Cosey Remix)

Chris Carter: Moonlight

Simple Minds: Theme For Great Cities

Durutti Column: It’s Wonderful

I have a significant birthday fast approaching. A few months ago we had planned that today would be a day of celebrating with anyone who wanted to join us, starting with lunch and few beers in town and then a tram pub crawl southbound out of the city centre towards Sale, stopping off in Old Trafford (maybe) and Stretford (definitely) before some drinks locally in the evening. That obviously isn't happening. I'll have to re-schedule for my 51st. 

Moonlight

Chris Carter- member of COUM and Throbbing Gristle, half of Chris And Cosey and Carter Tutti and a solo artist (and for good measure a man who designed and built his own electronic instruments, The Dirty Carter Experimental Sound Generating Instrument and The Gristleizer) is somebody who should be much more widely known than he is. His solo work from the 80s through to 2018's CCCL Vol. 1 is forward thinking, innovative, synth- led, electronic music, covering the whole gamut from industrial to electro- pop, from minimal new wave to EBM. His 1985 album Mondo Beat is a case in point, in parts accessible and in parts experimental. The opening track is Moonlight, a synth and drum machine classic- it starts out with noise and distortion but soon becomes more friendly, synth toplines and a chugging bassline, melodies winding and unwinding and propulsive, warm, mechanical rhythms. There are five more tracks on Mondo Beat, darker in places than Moonlight. Worth checking out. This being a Chris and Cosey enterprise the cover art features a close up of Cosey's rubber knickers.

Moonlight

Impulse Begin

Some forward thinking electronica from 1982 from the combined talents of Chris And Cosey, then fresh out of Throbbing Gristle and enjoying the freedom of their independence. Chris Carter pioneered the use of all kinds of equipment, not least the Roland 303 bassline synth and Roland 808 drum machine, back before most people had even heard of either.

Impulse

They've never really stopped and in recent years have made some wonderful remixes. This one is a case in point, a sweetly euphoric version of a Tim Burgess and Peter Gordon collaboration from 2016.

Begin (Carter Tutti Remix)

I'm part way through Cosey Fanni Tutti's autobiography, titled art sex music, and without giving too much away she has lived an eye-opening life, a life lived as art, and in the 1970s put up with some very shitty behaviour from Genesis P. Orridge.

Lab Test

The  Best of 2018 lists have begun and have prompted me to catch up with a couple of things I missed or overlooked earlier on this year. My favourite find so far, originally released back in March, is CCCL (Chris Carter's Chemistry Lessons Part 1). Carter was a quarter of Throbbing Gristle and a half of Chris And Cosey. Chemistry Lessons Part 1 is a round up of tracks he's recorded between 2010 and 2017, twenty five in total, all fairly short (most at around three minutes) and recorded using modular synths, digital synths, drum machines and found sounds and voices. The voices are cut up and treated and dropped in and out among the synths- there are nods to early 80s synth-pop, snippets of analogue industrial sounds, lovely little melodies bubbling away, some brief hits of Warp-style early 90s techno and some retro-futuristic lounge music and it all hangs together really well. It's a delight. Try this one.

Lab Test