Early Morning

Sunday morning vibes to kick off your day, slowly at first and then building- first a collaboration between Dan Wainwright and Rude Audio with a swirling, slow motion, Sabres Of Paradise influenced song, a dubbed out blur with some very reverbed vocals, FX stretched sounds. Early Morning unwinds itself in no particular hurry and very nicely indeed.

Second a series of remixes of Double Sided Mirror by Cold Beat. The original, a year old, sounds like a long lost 80s synthpop classic, capable of making the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. 

The remix package brings some heavyweights out to play including bass heavy, analogue hypnosis from ex- Cabaret Voltaire man Stephen Mallinder and some gorgeous motorik euphoria from Sean Johnston's Hardway Bros and Duncan Gray, billed together as Hardway Bros Meet Monkton Uptown. Sean's remix output over the last year has been immense and difficult to keep tabs on and the standard is incredibly high but this is right up there (and reminiscent of his A Mountain Of Rimowa track from 2019, the spellbinding groove A Motorik Oscillation Retread). The Cold Beat remixes are available at Bandcamp, a phrase I am type regularly at the moment.

Decline And Fall

Sean Johnston in his A Mountain Of Rimowa guise specialises in long, undulating tracks, melodic and euphoric chuggers, packed with those head tilted back, eyes closed beatific moments, where if you were in a club or in a crowd there would be an act of communion, of music transcending its surroundings. Under the circumstances, these moments aren't happening  but we can dream. 

The ep, titled The Decline And Fall of A Mountain Of Rimowa, has three new tracks plus a remix. No More (with a remix by Each Other) is all the above and more, a driving bassline and swooping synthlines, piano and some Joubert Singers style vocals for added bliss. Likely to provoke arms in the air, hairs on the nape of the neck raised, tell a random stranger you love him/her emotions. 

His Brothers And Sisters In The East starts out slow, ticking drum machine and piano chords and adds then drops in a gurning acid part, sneaking it in and it leaves it there, repeating, looping onwards and outwards.

The Joker builds slowly and intensely, spaced out bleeps and a deep, pulsing bassline. The breakdown at four minutes and subsequent re- entry of snare, bass and synths is like swimming through warm water towards the sun. The topline bounces around just out of reach. And then it's 5am and it's time to go home. 

A Motorik Oscillation Retread

Back in March I posted a pair of tracks by A Mountain Of Rimowa, a driving, electrified, bass-led monster drawing a straight line between West Germany in the 1970s and small nightclubs in 2019 filled with chuggy cosmic disco/house. It shouldn't therefore be too much of a surprise to find out that the man behind A Mountain Of Rimowa is Sean Johnston, Hardway Brother and one half of ALFOS. The two versions of A.M.O.R. disappeared from Soundcloud a while ago but it is now back digitally, at Bandcamp and Youtube, with a release scheduled for early October. Let there be much psychedelic and groove based rejoicing. Especially if you're lucky enough to be in Carcassonne this weekend.

Motorik Oscillation

Weatherall was back at NTS a couple of days ago, a further two hours of gnostic sonics, musical adventures in the end times, songs to sing as the ship goes down.

Webbie's 'Andy who?' comment is expected some time this afternoon.



The tracklist is here. The closing track is a bit of a monster, seven minutes of driving bass, Motorik drumming and heavenly synth sounds from A Mountain Of Rimowa, well worth a posting in its own right.



The original version is less frenetic, moves at a more stately pace with peaks and troughs and some lovely drum pads but is no less intense and very good too- the section around seven minutes through to the end is very celestial. 'Functional dance music for emotional humans' he/she/they claim modestly.