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.