Midnight Versions

Much of what I've posted here over the last month has been new music. It always used to seem that August was a bit of a quiet time, a dead zone in the music industry, nothing much released, everyone waiting for the big rush of autumn releases- but over the last month I've posted new music from Adrian Sherwood, Jezebell, Statues, The Lemonheads, The Charlatans, The Orb, ddwy, Jazxing, Puerto Montt City Orchestra, 100 Poems, Sewell And The Gong, Daniel Avery, Factory Floor, Number, Jay- Son, Byron Carignan, Luke Schneider, Florecer and senses remixed by GLOK. There's probably loads I've missed too and I've got several other new releases noted down to be posted in the upcoming days and weeks. 

All of this is a good thing obviously, new music to be enjoyed and absorbed, but it also possibly makes the posts a little perfunctory sometimes- there isn't always a lot of context or narrative, just me saying, 'here's some new music, I like it, I think you might like it too', and then some kind of attempt at describing said music. The sheer amount of new music also means that sometimes it feels like one listens to something new a lot for a few days and then move on to the next new thing and then on again, a flow that can feel like a flood, and there's a danger that stuff gets lost further upstream behind me/ us. 

This came out yesterday, a new version of a Daniel Avery single that came out two weeks ago. Rapture In Blue is the first single from his new album that comes out at the end of October (with a gig in Manchester the same night). It has Cecile Believe on vocals and guitar from Andy Bell and sounds better with each listen, a 2025 goth- pop/ dance rhapsody, a slow burning rush. The Rapture In Blue (Midnight Version), out at Bandcamp, is a re- imagined version,, made for darker corners and specifically for the club, to shake the floor in DJ sets- that doesn't stop it from sounding good at home though. The pop dynamics and mid- 80s film feel is dialed down and stripped back, with drums and bass toughened and isolated and Cecile's vocal isolated on top. There are whooshes, industrial clangs, shuddering synth breakdowns and stuttering vocal parts. I already like it as much as the original. I'm anticipating that as the album release draws nearer and more songs are released ahead of it, there may be more Midnight Versions too. 

Midnight occurs in thousands of song titles- a search of my downloads folder brings up hundreds. In May Peaking Lights and Coyote released an EP called Love Letters/ So Far Away, three beautifully hazy, dubby tracks. Back in 2012 Peaking Lights remixed their entire Lucifer album as a dub version and Midnight Dub is as good as anything they have done before or since. Gloriously blissed out, wonky dub- pop. 

Midnight Dub

Baltic Fleet is a one man band from Warrington, named after a famous waterfront pub in Liverpool. Paul Fleming played keys and synths for Echo And The Bunnymen and built up a repertoire of songs that he released as a self- titled debut album, Towers, in 2008, followed by Towers (2012), The Wilds (2013) and The Dear One (2016). Midnight Train is from Towers, a chiming, synth- led instrumental, the autobahns of mid- 70s West Germany crossing over to the M62. 

Midnight Train

Finally, a third midnight song, this one from 1987, a single by Creation group The Weather Prophets- Midnight Mile was the B-side to Why Does The Rain although by this point they'd jumped from Creation to Elevation, a Creation offshoot label that Alan McGee set up in conjunction with major label WEA- a major label funded indie that was supposed to benefit from better distribution, and hoped that the better sales would siphon money back to Creation to invest in other artists. 

Midnight Mile is very typical of the period between the end of The Smiths and the dawn of acid house/ indie dance, Pete Astor's '87 jangle- pop confessional produced by Lenny Kaye. 

Midnight Mile

Elevation eventually folded. WEA expected an instant return and hit singles, something The Weather Prophets didn't/ couldn't provide and singles by Primal Scream and Edwyn Collins didn't either. McGee later said setting up Elevation was the biggest mistake he made. Such was the indie scene in 1987 that bands who left the indie nest often lost their original fans who saw major label money as evidence of selling out.  Nowadays everyone and anyone can release songs immediately via Bandcamp (or other services), on their own and cut out the middle man/ record label completely- although the returns are pretty low and not everyone, or many, can make a living out of it. 

Acropolis Now

We got back from Rhodes in the early hours of Monday night/ Tuesday Morning. Our pre- holiday fears about the wildfires and cancellations were unfounded- many of the local people we spoke to said the fires were not directly threatening Lindos and had been made to look worse on the television than they were. Some of the staff at the hotel had been affected and evacuated from their homes but they wanted us back and contributing to the local economy. The first few days were noticeably quieter than usual, the tourists returning in greater numbers by the end of the week. As a result we had the run of the hotel pools for the first few days. Rhodes at this time of year is very hot and very sunny. The town of Lindos is dominated by its Acropolis.

It was the first thing we saw from our balcony each morning and the last thing at night, illuminated against the night sky. Lindos town is built into a gap in the rocks by the harbour, a maze of streets and houses, restaurants and bars with roof terraces and shops. The Acropolis dates back to at least the third century BC, the Temple to Athena at the top overlooking the sea. It's the sort of place which it is impossible to get a bad photo of- I won't bore you with all my holiday snaps but the Acropolis and Lindos are spectacular and very photogenic.

It was in use through the Greek, Roman and Byzantine periods, then occupied by the Knights of St. John (who fortified it and built many of the castle walls around it) and then by the Ottomans. During the Italian occupation (1912- 1945) it was restored, badly, and the Greeks have been working to restore and protect the site since then. It is a hot walk up to the Acropolis but well worth it. The Greek attitude to handrails and guardrails once up there is very different from here. There are several places were you could walk straight over the edge and fall hundreds of feet to the rocks below. It's a wonderful place to visit and left a deep impression on me. 

Back in 2012 Warrington musician Paul Fleming (also the Bunnymen's touring keyboard player), recording as Baltic Fleet, made an album of krauty/ cosmische/ post rock instrumentals on an album called Towers. One of them was this one...

Headless Horsemen Of The Acropolis

Last Friday, while we were sunning it up in Rhodes, was Bandcamp Friday and a rush of interesting new music flowed through the internet into inboxes. Among them was the latest from Woodleigh Research Facility and Nina Walsh's Apparently Solo series, this one being Volume 4. Borderlands has been floating around for a while on Youtube and it was in one of Andrew Weatherall's NTS radio shows, a track Nina wrote on a midi keyboard that had been set up for Andrew to use at Facility 4 back in 2019. Nina's composition had a Smokebelch- esque feel to it, even more so when classical viola player Sarah Sarhandi was asked to contribute strings to it. Andrew went onto remix the track and it was planned to be included in a WRF event at the Barbican, an event which never happened when Andrew died in February 2020. Nina's original version, Andrew's eight minute remix and Jagz Kooner's remix (Jagz being a Sabres Of Paradise cohort of Andrew's) are all at Bandcamp. Andrew's remix adds sweeping synth strings, trademark rolling tom toms and twinkling melodies and a sense of widescreen, celestial floatation. Jagz pitches the tempo up slightly, the drums a bit thumpier and drops in some vocal snippets, Andrew asking questions about stars and rockets and machines. 

The Dear One

Back in 2013 I wrote about Towers, the second album from one man band Baltic Fleet. The one man is Paul Fleming, former touring keyboardist for Echo And The Bunnymen, who has returned with another album- The Dear One. This is the title track and single, an instrumental with more than a nod to your cosmische West German groups and a synth riff that'll stick in your cranium for days. The album takes in similar sounds, passing through Eno and Bowie's Berlin days. It's affecting and exhilarating stuff- and fully fits in with this week's mission to defy fascists with music. Avanti!

Baltic Fleet

I've just got hold of this via Twitter- it's not just there for clever one-liners and telling people what you're doing right now. If you give your email address to the box in this link here you can download an excellent guitar and organ led, post-punk/motorik instrumental from Baltic Fleet, who by name alone sound like they should be on the bill at some History Rocks festival alongside Public Service Broadcasting and British Sea Power, possibly held in a disused Cold War bunker site or a World War Two airfield. With only rationed food available in the food tent. Mr Billy Childish could appear too. And our friend Andrew Weatherall would dj between the bands while also modelling the finest tweeds.

Baltic Fleet is Warrington's Paul Fleming (who used pay the bills by playing keyboards for the Bunnymen). Course, what the free download is meant to do is get you to want to buy the album. Which I quite fancy now.

The photo shows the famous Baltic Fleet pub in Liverpool.