Soundtrack Saturday

Back in January of this year I stated this weekly Saturday series, following year long ones from previous years- Saturday live (live performances) and VA Saturday (various artists compilations). Saturday Soundtrack is drawing to a close and I need to think of something new for 2026. 

Soundtrack Saturday started with Blade Runner and then went on to cover Wings Of Desire, Paris Texas, 20th Century Women, Walker, Lost In Translation, Performance, Bullitt, Midnight Cowboy, High Fidelity, Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice, The Rockford Files, Escape From New York, The Sheltering Sky, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, Shopping, Absolute Beginners, Salvation, Repo Man, Trainspotting, The Beach, Flashback, The Wicker Man, Brian Eno on Jubilee, Heat and We Are As Gods, Ennio Morricone's Dollars trilogy, Sid And Nancy, Amongst Friends, Rockers, Mystery Train, Betty Blue, Goblin scoring Profondo Rosso, Suspiria and Zombi- Dawn Of The Dead, Butch Cassady And The Sundance Kid, Apocalypse Now!, The Clangers, Chris Massey's live re- scoring of silent films from 1920s Germany (The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari, Metropolis and Nosferatu), Brush Strokes, Out Of Sight, Down By Law, The Ipcress File, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (The Road, The Assassination Of Jesse James BY The Coward Robert Ford and La Panthere De Neiges), various Western TV and film themes Rawhide, Bonanza, The High Chaparral and The Magnificent 7), On The Road and most recently Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid. 

You don't need me to tell you how great Blade Runner is and how perfectly Vangelis' music fitted with Ridley Scott's visuals. One of the joys of the Blade Runner soundtrack is the use of dialogue from the film on the OST album. Harrison Ford's voice adds a lot to the Vangelis' synths here, sci fi noir and symphonic drama in sync...

Blade Runner (Main Titles)

I think it's now pretty clear that Ford's Deckard isn't really the hero of Blade Runner. Deckard's job is to 'retire' replicants. In 2019, when the film is set (made in 1982 when 2019 seemed impossibly far away), most work has been outsourced to replicants, human seeming androids made with an expiry date. These replicants have reached a pint where the manufacturers can even give them memories, enabling them to believe they are human. Early on Deckard meets Rachael (played by Sean Young), a replicant who has no idea she is not human. Deckard falls in love with Rachael, further adding to the complications. 'Too bad she won't live forever', he is told at the end, mockingly. 'But then again, who does?'

What it means to be human is central to the film as is the question of the morality of creating beings that believe they are human and giving them the jobs that humans won't do. Pris, played by Darryl Hannah, is described as 'a basic pleasure model'. Roy Batty, played by Rutger Hauer, is the leader of a four replicant gang, AWOL on earth and needing to be retired. Batty and the other replicants are the real heroes of Blade Runner. At the film's end Batty demonstrates his humanity, saving Deckard despite the Blade Runner trying to kill him. Batty's monologue, partly improvised by Hauer, is legendary...

Tears In Rain

In 2013 Grumbling Fur released a song, The Ballad Of Roy Batty, a cosmic, choral, psychedelic song with Hauer's words sung by the band. It sounds like it could a bad idea on paper but actually works really well, the monologue's message- life is short, experiences are fleeting, we all die, make the most of it- as apt now as it was when a fictional character muttered it on film back in 1982. More in fact. 

A Brand New Moon Is Born

I was in two minds about going to see Mercury Rev at New Century Hall last Friday night. A friend who saw them in Dublin last year said they were a bit hit and miss and the album, Born Horses, has some good songs on it and some I'm less sure about. But, I've been playing the pair of late 20th and early 21st century albums that are probably their peak- Deserter's Songs and All Is Dream- a lot recently and the possibility of seeing those songs played live was very tempting. My brother was keen, several friends were going and there were some tickets left so I took the risk and it more than paid off. Mercury Rev were on fire and as they wend their way across the country this month anyone going to any of the other dates is in for a good evening. 

The two core members, singer/ guitarist Jonathan Donohue and guitarist Grasshopper, have been joined by a new piano/ sax/ flute player Jesse Chandler and keys player Marion Genser plus a drummer (set up at the side of the stage) who loves the motorik kraut rhythms. They arrived on stage one by one, picking their way into the ambient soundscape of The Little Bird. Donohue arrives, very much the frontman, theatrical hand gestures and long cuffs sticking out from under his black jacket and then they burst into Tonite It Shows. From that point on their homebrewed combination of 1940s Disney soundtracks, 60s psychedelia, 90s alt- rock, their own weird Baroque Americana, long drawn out Tangerine Dream style sections and bursts of twin guitar, everyone playing everything together and really loudly, really hits home. 

Halfway through, after a run of psychedelic torch songs, Jonathan leans into to the mic and starts speaking Rutger Hauer's famous lines from Blade Runner, 'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe, attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, I've watched C- Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate... all these things will be lost in time... like tears in rain'. Jesse gets the sax out and they play a full cover of Vangelis' Tears In Rain from the Blade Runner soundtrack that drifts by beautifully. Then the dive into Goddess On A Hiway, blasting into the chorus with the lines 'And I know it ain't gonna last/ When I see your eyes arrive/ They explode like two bugs on glass...

Goddess On A Hiway

The second half of the set is perfectly weighed- Ancient Love from Born Horses, a song with a lengthy spoken word section inspired by the words of Robert Creeley and sumptuous, orchestral early 70s easy listening.

Tides Of The Moon from All Is Dream is followed by the always powerful Holes from Deserter's Songs, a song that still startles not least the bit where the band drop down and Donohue sings, 'Holes/ Dug by little moles/ Angry jealous spies/ They got telephones for eyes'. And then Opus 40, a song seemingly inspired equally by 1920s cinema and wasted 60s cosmic psychedelia, the existential lyric 'I'm alive she cried but I don't know what it means' at its heart. 'Tears in waves/ Minds on fire'. Donohue is conducting the band, throwing his arms out left and right. Finally the play The Dark Is Rising, the huge, emotive and affecting opening song from 2001's All Is Dream, a song about love and loss set to a grand swell of orchestral psychedelia, Jonathan crooning 'In my dreams I'm always strong'. I'm sure I can't be the only person wiping their eyes.  

The Dark Is Rising

The band start to wind the song down, Jonathan departs, the musicians leave one by one and that's it, no encore, the songs played almost without a gap between them, one becoming the next and fading out as they faded in ninety minutes earlier. 

The two pictures above are mine. This one is from the band's Facebook page taken by Vittorio Bongiorno.

Forty Minutes Of Dreams

While searching through my music folders and files recently I was struck by the number of songs I had that have the word 'dream' or 'dreams' in the title. A rich source of songwriting inspiration. They say hearing about other people's dreams is really boring but I don't think that's always they case. My own dreams have become really vivid and at times quite disturbing in the three years since Isaac died (and also since I started taking statins for high cholesterol a year and a half ago). Waking up having dreamed of Isaac, him being there and talking to me, is always a startling way to start the day (or the middle of the night). It takes a moment for me to realise it was a dream and that he's not there. Sometimes that half asleep- half awake state can be really pleasant and attempting to go back to sleep to go back into a nice dream is something that I'm sure lots of us do. 

Whatever the reason for dreaming, the brain/ consciousness sifting through stuff and pulling things from the dim and distant past into our sleeping state along with bizarre and random, surreal situations, is a rich vein of inspiration for songwriters- both musically and lyrically. Ambient music often seems like an attempt to make music that can soundtrack dreams. The blur and fuzz of shoegaze and psychedelia likewise. As all this percolated through my head on the road coming home from work one evening last week it seemed that a dreams mix was in order. 

Forty Minutes Of Dreams

• Kevin McCormick & David Horridge: Glass Dream
• Kim Gordon: Dream Dollar
• Spatial Awareness: Dream Food (SA Dub)
• Suicide: Dream Baby Dream (Single Version)
• Lunar Dunes: Pharaoh's Dream
• Ride: Dreams Burn Down
• Mark Peters: Red Sunset Dreams
• Sheer: Mezcal Dream
• Spirea X: Chlorine Dream
• Blade Runner Soundtrack: Deckard's Dream

Kevin McCormick is a Mancunian guitarist who released several albums of minimal instrumental music in the early 80s. He met bassist David Horridge in the late 70s and in 1982 they recorded Light Patterns, a minimal, gently psychedelic/ ambient album. Largely ignored, the album and others by Kevin were re- released in 2021. Last year Kevin released a new album- Passing Clouds- which is lovely and can be found at Bandcamp. 

Kim Gordon's solo album from last year, The Collective, passed me by a bit but it's a powerful piece of work, a jolt of electricity, hip hop drums, noise and Kim's NY blank cool. 

Spatial Awareness released Dream Food as an EP last year, an electronic trippy delight with this dub as a dreamy counterpoint. 

Suicide's Dream Baby Dream is one of those songs, an all timer. It came out as a single in 1979, a repetitive synth, drum machine and vocal blur of brilliance, a song lost in its own state of warm, blissful ignorance, the synth patterns circling endlessly. A track that could be loped for an hour and not outstay its welcome. 

Lunar Dunes' Galaxsea originally came out in 2011, post- jazz, post- punk, dubby global tracks 'for truth seekers and interplanetary vacationers'. The band included former members of Cornershop and Transglobal Underground and took the 1960s and 70s West German bands as their inspiration. Pharoah's Dream is at the centre of Galaxsea and rattles along in a cosmische and future jazz way.

Dreams Burn Down was on Ride's 1990 debut album Nowhere, a shoegaze classic, crunching FX guitars, slow motion drums and typically youthful lyrics about lost or unrequited love. Live Dreams Burn Down is massive, a wall of sound and sensation. 

Mark Peters is a guitarist from Wigan. His solo albums, 2017's Innerland and 2022's Red Sunset Dreams, are big Bagging Area favourites. The title track of the second is a rippling ambient instrumental, the wide open spaces of the American West crossed with north west England psychedelia. 

Sheer is Sheer Taft who in 1990 made one of the era's best wobbly Balearic dance records, the mighty Cascades. In 2022 Sheer Taft, now residing in Spain rather than Glasgow, made a follow up, an album called ...And Then There Were Four, a Spaghetti Western album with Andrew Innes and the late Martin Duffy from Primal Scream on board.

Jim Beattie was a founder member of Primal Scream, leaving to form Spirea X who released an album in 1991, Fireblade Skies. The debut release was a single the year before, Chlorine Dream, guitars from The Byrds, attitude from Glasgow, drums and vocals from 1990. 

An expanded, full length version of the Blade Runner soundtrack, The Esper Edition, was unofficially released and has done the rounds as a bootleg for years. The film deals with all sorts of themes dreams being one of them. Deckard's Dream is one minute and ten seconds of Vangelis/ ambient sound. In the film Deckard dreams of a unicorn, the meaning of which has been argued about since the film's release in 1982. 

Soundtrack Saturday

Throughout 2024 I ran a series every Saturday called V.A. Saturday, a celebration of the various artists compilation album. I could probably keep this going but felt it was time for a change so am shifting the Saturday slot to an appreciation of soundtrack albums, the records/ CDs released to accompany films. There's a difference between soundtracks and original scores which I will probably skirt the line of, and maybe at times the old V.A. Saturday might return. 

When I was a kid, I'm talking twelve/ thirteen, I was really into soundtracks. I was a big fan of cinema and the early 80s were a good time to be into films. Soundtrack albums were tied in to the cinematic releases, and were often if truth be told a bit of a let down. What sounded epic and exciting over the cinema speakers and complemented by the visuals could easily sound less so at home. But there were enough really good soundtrack releases that stood on their own two feet and it was a habit that lasted through the 80s, vinyl OSTs and soundtracks a big part of my fledgling record collection. In 1981 I bought the Raiders Of The Lost Ark soundtrack, my first soundtrack album, with John Williams' orchestral theme played by the London Symphony Orchestra often on the Dansette turntable. I was a slightly quirky child at this age. The same year, '81 (I was eleven), I was invited to a fancy dress party and went as Lawrence of Arabia. Everyone else was far more plugged in to popular culture for their fancy dress. The Raiders soundtrack didn't survive the years- I've no idea what happened to it. 

The following year Blade Runner came out. I was a big Harrison Ford fan and had an interest in film noir (early evening BBC2 often showed black and white films from the 1940s). The cinema up the road from us in Withington, the Scala (later Cine City, now a Tesco) had a liberal attitude to age certificates and admission and twelve year old me got in to see Blade Runner despite looking )and being) too young. Blade Runner is a very different kettle of androids compared to Raiders Of The Lost Ark or Star Wars- dark, ambiguous, dystopian. I loved it and love it still, whatever cut or version you're watching. I had no problem with the studio added voice over (and don't still) or the vaguely happier ending the studio tacked on to Ridley Scott's film. 

The soundtrack too planted deep roots in me, Vangelis' synthesisers and timpani, his wide screen electronics, jazz saxophone and film noir influences, all very memorable and  striking. Not that anyone could buy the soundtrack- it was unavailable until 1994 and then released in a strange version that included recordings not even used in the film.  

Vangelis' equipment list for the recording of the soundtrack is a synth lovers dream- various Rolands including the Jupiter 4, Yamahas, a Fender Rhodes. He supplemented them with traditional percussion instruments and when the various versions of the soundtrack were released, snippets of dialogue from the film were included, not least the famous Rutger Hauer Tears In Rain monologue. Blade Runner is a masterpiece, a perfect vinyl soundtrack album, twelve tracks of early 80s synth music, enormously influential, futuristic, moving, powerful, evocative, romantic and haunting, and a narrative in its own right. 

Blade Runner (Main Titles)

Tales Of The Future

Blade Runner (End Titles)

Tears In Rain

Saturday Theme Eleven: RIP Vangelis

News came through on Thursday evening that Vangelis had died aged 79. Vangelis' soundtrack to Blade Runner (and all the other aspects of the film) are one of the formative influences on my tastes. Back in 1982, aged 12, the dark sci fi crossed with film noir of Blade Runner had a huge impact on me. Vangelis' synth soundtrack, from the pulsing, swooping Main Titles music through to the subtly epic Tears In Rain scene, is superb, the perfect synthesis of music and visuals. The soundtrack wasn't actually released until the 1992. Due to contractual difficulties an orchestral version recorded by the New American Orchestra came out in 1982, a version which was some distance from Vangelis' soundtrack. To listen to that you had to play your VHS copy. 

In the middle of the film replicant hunting Blade Runner Deckard is saved from death at Leon's hands by Rachael (the beautiful and brilliantly cast Sean Young). In a previous scene Rachael had turned up at Deckard's apartment trying to convince him she was human and not a replicant, based on the belief she had memories of her childhood. Those memories, the memories of her creator's niece, were implanted in her. When they return to Deckard's apartment, a single's man's flat in the middle of a futuristic Los Angeles where it rains perpetually, Deckard promises not to track her down and 'retire' her. They kiss and Vangelis' Love Theme plays, lush symphonic synth music with Dick Morrissey's tenor sax taking the lead. 

Love Theme

Later on, in the late 80s and early 90s Vangelis' music would enter my musical world again, with the majestic State Of Independence (both the 1982 Donna Summer single and the 1992 cover by Moodswings) and then the mid- 90s revival of some of his first band's music, the Greek psychedelia of Aphrodite's Child, especially the epic Four Horsemen.

RIP Vangelis. 

Tears In June

Richard Norris continues to produce his Music For Healing series, monthly long form pieces of ambient/ deep listening. It started in March last year, and turned out to be an excellent way to deal with the pressures of lockdown. This year's releases have all been named after the months they appear in- June's is a particularly special piece of music. It's at Bandcamp. As it plays, the twinkling synth parts and washes of warm drone, there are moments where it really reminds me of Vangelis' Blade Runner soundtrack and especially Roy Batty's death scene with Rutger Hauer's partly improvised monologue. 

'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the Shoulder of Orion. I watched C- Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.'

Tears In Rain

As June plays it attains a real sense of weightlessness, of being beyond gravity, the feeling of drifting through space. This feed from the International Space Station provides some very fitting footage to go with Richard's music. 

Monday Mix

I did another mix for Scotland's Tak Tent Radio and it went out yesterday from their nerve centre. I put it together back in March when the days were shorter and I seemed to spend a lot of time walking round in the dark after work- seems a bit gloomy now that it's May and the evenings are lighter much later. At first I intended it to be a fully ambient/ drone mix, partly because I was listening to a lot of ambient music in my headphones while walking and partly because I'd just begun reading Harry Sword's book, Monolithic Undertow, a history and appreciation of the drone from Neolithic times to the present day (highly recommended if you haven't read it) but I got twenty five minutes into the mix and thought we needed some drums (and a voice or two too). Tak Tent Radio is here, loads of great stuff to listen to. Bagging Area Tak Tent Three is at Mixcloud. Tracklist below. 

Tak Tent Three

• Luke Schneider: Anteludium
• Daniel Avery: Tremor
• A Winged Victory For The Sullen: The Dead Outnumber The Living
• Richard Norris: Hilma
• Craven Faults: Cupola Smelt Mill
• Pye Corner Audio: Quarry Rave
• Herrmann Kristoferson: Gone Gold
• Ruf Dug: Dominica (Kenneth Bager’s Sunset Ambient Mix)
• Andrew Weatherall and Michael Smith: Estuary Embers
• Art Of Noise: Moments In Love
• Cheval Sombre: It’s Not Time
• Vangelis/ Blade Runner: Pris Meets JF Sebastian 
• Vangelis/ Blade Runner: Spinner Ascent

Too Bad She Won't Live... But Then Again, Who Does?

'A new life awaits you in the Off- world colonies! A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!'

Two weeks ago I published a post about Blade Runner and the long lasting impact of Vangelis' music from the 1982 film. The soundtrack, held up for years in legal disputes, eventually came out in the mid 1990s and included pieces of dialogue from the film among the synths and timpani to great effect. For some time there have been a series of bootleg editions of an album called Blade Runner Esper Edition, originating (I think) in 2001 on CDr. The Esper Edition is the full, proper soundtrack to Ridley Scott's film, an ambient/ musical edition across two discs, the score as well as music from the film itself, the dialogue (but not Harrison Ford's controversial film noir voiceover) and all the noises from the film- the rain, street sounds, voices, gunshots, the Voight- Kampf machine, hovercars, footsteps, all the ambient background sounds of Los Angeles in 2019 (or the Blade Runner version of it). You can fall down some internet wormholes looking at all the different bootleg editions that have been produced, various claims to be definitive and better or best quality. This one seems to be highly rated and to my ears is as good  as you're going to need. 

Blade Runner Esper Edition

And if you want to go deeper and further Youtube is full of parts of the soundtrack slowed down for a long, soft, ambient drone, white noise and Vangelis six hundred times slower than intended- this one, Blade Runner Blues slowed right down is a beautiful way to spend an hour.

Tales Of The Future

More and more I think that the soundtrack to Blade Runner has been a formative influence on my listening. Which is weird because if someone asked me to list my favourite artists I'd never reply 'Vangelis'. Then film came out in 1982 and I saw it at the cinema (the Scala in Withington, a very run down flea pit with three screens, two small ones downstairs and a larger one upstairs with double seats on the back row. Entry was £1 and they weren't too fussy about age restrictions. It later became Cine City and then was demolished). The look of the film, the non stop rain and night, neon lights, 1940s/ 1980s fashions, Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Darryl Hannah and Sean Young all captured my attention- the famous roof top scene and Roy Batty's death (and Hauer's famous improvised lines) lingered long after the credits had rolled. Vangelis' instrumental score must have stuck with me too- the synths and keyboards, the rolling drums and pulsing synthesisers, the bleeps and sounds of the machinery worked into the music and the snippets of dialogue, the strange bursts of Japanese singing in Tales Of The Future, the ambient washes of sound and sudden rumbles of distant timpani... I hear these all over the place in things I listen to at the moment. Vangelis has a long shadow.

Tales Of The Future

Blade Runner (End Titles)

Tears In Rain

Strange to think that when Blade Runner came out the year it was set in, 2019, was nearly four decades away in the future and is now two years gone. These Polaroids were taken by Sean Young during filming are an incredible time capsule and snapshot of the past/ future.

The Big Sleep

There's a film channel on Freeview called TCM which shows a random selection of movies. Recently I noticed that they were scheduled to show The Bog Sleep and The Maltese Falcon so set the box to record both.  I was a big fan of film noir back in the 80s and early 90s, watched both these films and others, especially those with Humphrey Bogart in them. I read some of Raymond Chandler's novels. This week there was a night when everyone was out and I settled down to watch The Big Sleep.

Bogart plays a private detective Phillip Marlowe hired by General Sternwood to settle a problem with some gambling debts one of his daughters (Lauren Bacall) has accrued. Carmen (Bacall) wants to stop him. She suspects that what her father really wants is to find Sean Regan, who vanished in mysterious circumstances a month earlier. From there on in the plot thickens to involve a bookseller, some blackmail regarding indecent photos of the younger Sternwood daughter, a very flirtatious scene in the bookshop and implied sex, a casino belonging to Eddie Mars, several visits to a house where the body of the bookseller Joe Geiger is found, a beating for Bogart, some resolution of plot issues, Bogart and Bacall suddenly falling in love and the death of Eddie Mars, shot by his own men when Bogie tricks him into going outside. All good film noir stuff.

The film was made during the war- there are a few wartime moments such as a female taxi driver and poster of FDR- but its release was delayed until 1946 so the studios could rush release all the war films they'd made. It was criticised on release for being difficult to follow and confusing. Marlowe sometimes makes deductions that aren't shared with the audience. The death of chauffeur Owen Taylor is unexplained. It's not especially confusing but there is a lot of back and forth, people going to and from places rapidly. There's little character development, it is all plot. And it does look old- really old. But Bogart and Bacall are superb, the lighting is dramatic, there's a grittiness about it that appeals and script is witty and fresh. Everyone, Bogart especially, smokes constantly.

A couple of pop culture things leapt out. Firstly the line 'now wait a minute, you better talk to my mother', taken by Coldcut, who have been posted here several times this week now, and used in their 1987 remix of Eric B and Rakim's Paid In Full. Paid In Full (Seven Minutes of Madness Mix) was a pioneering example of the art of the remix, a record that gave Eric and Rakim a hit, spliced in vocals from a recent hit from Ofra Haza and introduced the world to the much used 'This is a journey into sound...' sample.

Paid In Full (Seven Minutes Of Madness Mix)

When Marlowe (Bogart) visits Eddie Mars' casino Vivian (Bacall) is singing (backed by The Williams Brothers including Andy). The song is And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine, a jazz song written by Stan Kenton. One of the lines she sings refers to a girl being 'a sad tomato'- the lines go 'she's a sad tomato/she's a busted valentine'.



In 1994 Michael Stipe would use the same line in R.E.M.'s Crush With Eyeliner, a line that has always jumped out at me as being such an odd expression. I've no idea if Stipe got it from The Big Sleep or from a different version of the song but it seems reasonable to assume he watched the film late night on tour in a hotel room. Stipe follows it with 'she's three miles of bad road'.



Finally, as this picture shows, the younger of the two Sternwood girls must have been one of the inspirations for the look Ridley Scott gave Sean Young in Blade Runner (Martha Vickers, second right).

That's your lot from The Big Sleep. Next stop for me is to watch The Maltese Falcon, a film and book that from memory are far more confusing and difficult to follow than The Big Sleep.

Monday's Long Song

Eight minutes of blissed out synths and drum pads from Scottish DJ and producer Lord of The Isles with a track named after Rutger Hauer's famous line from Blade Runner. Tears In Rain was the closer on a 2011 release, an ep called We Were There (Freestyle Dancin').

Tears In Rain

If you want some freestyle dancing to brighten up your Monday this clip came my way over the weekend and it's ace, champion B-girls Wonda and Macca cutting some rug to Caterpillar by Royce da 5' 9".

Do Androids Dream Of 2019?

We're now in the year Blade Runner was set. We have until November for all the aspects of the film to be realised- replicants, flying cars, off world colonies, Voight- Kampff empathy response machines (although it wouldn't surprise me if these do exist). Maybe Blade Runner isn't very far from our 2019 at all- in the film corporations are all powerful, product and advertising is everywhere, the climate is seemingly broken (perpetual rain and night), the wealthy isolate themselves living high up above the streets where everyone else exists. Deckard's Esper machine is voice controlled and has the functions of Google Earth, the ability to manipulate photographs.

In Blade Runner's 2019 people dress in a cross between 1940s film noir and early 80s synth pop.

In the meantime, Vangelis' soundtrack remains a repeated joy.

Rachel's Song

Blade Runner Blues

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

Holger Czukay

Holger Czukay, bassist in Can and artist in his own right, has died at the age of 79. Holger joined Can in 1968 and was a key player, not just on the bass, but in engineering and producing their records and encouraging and exploring the experimental electronics they moved into. His basslines were recognisable and innovative. Can have become one of the names to drop, one of the 'seminal' influences, but they were also genuinely groundbreaking and have layers and layers of sound to soak up. The rhythm section was often right at the forefront and by placing bass and drums at the heart of Can's sound, minimal and repetitive beats, they made krautrock something you could dance to. White, German men making dance music. Drummer Jaki Leibezeit died earlier this year too. Yesterday's Spacemen 3 song was over ten minutes long. This is double that. Plus, you can spot Bobby Gillespie's lyrical steal.

Yoo Doo Right

And just to demonstrate one outpost the Can influence spread to here's a dreamy Carl Craig remix from 1997, Future Days (Bladerunner Mix).

Too Bad She Won't Live Forever...

'...but then again who does?'

Sean Young's Polaroids she took during the filming of Bladerunner are really something else.

And here's even more Bladerunner. You may have heard there's a new film imminent, Bladerunner 2049. Spain's disco/house producer Vicmoren has a free download of his theme to the new film on Soundcloud. Vangelis evidently referred to, this is ten minutes of minimal soundtrack electronica well spent.

Towca Androidow

Sometimes things just come together nicely, one thing from over there and another from over here. On Friday the Pulp Librarian posted this Polish promo poster for Bladerunner on Twitter. On Saturday while watching something completely unrelated on Youtube this long trancey remix of Vangelis' Bladerunner soundtrack turned up on the right hand side. A rather good expansive, trippy re-working of the film's soundtrack by Tranonica.

Into The Cosmos

If you're at a loose end and want something to soundtrack ninety minutes of your life you could do worse than this mix from the Quiet Storm family, a blogmind compilation expertly sequenced by Mark. This one took suggestions of songs inspired by the cosmos, the moon and the stars. It opens with William Shatner, takes in a wide cast of stargazers including Prefab Sprout, Billy Preston, AR Kane, The Upsetters, David Sylvian, Chilly Gonzales, Billy Bragg, Declan O'Rourke, Stereolab, I Am Kloot, Mayer Hawthorne, Sandy Denny and Labelle and finishes with Rutger Hauer and the 'tears in rain' scene from Bladerunner. See if you can guess what I suggested.



And this didn't occur to me at the time but it could have been a fine addition to the mix, Paul Weller dubbed out and spaced out by Brendan Lynch back in 1993.

Kosmos (Lynch Mob Bonus Beats)

Orion

Sons And Daughters were a two boy/two girl band from Glasgow, dressed like Johnny Cash and sounding like a roots group gone punk. Taut guitars, crisp drums, Scottish swagger, growls and shrieks in the vocals. I liked their first two albums a lot. They split up a few years ago.

The Emperor Machine is Andrew Meecham, synth enthusiast and producer and formerly a member of Bizarre Inc. In 2012 he remixed Sons And Daughters' Orion and turned it into a long, funky, expansive, in your face, cosmic trip. Eleven minutes and thirty seven seconds of trip.

Orion (Emperor Machine Mix)

Orion is one of the most prominent constellations in the sky, visible across the world, named after Orion the Hunter from Greek mythology. It makes me think of Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty in Bladerunner...

'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the Shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die'

Elle Et Moi

Sean Young and Rutger Hauer on the set of Bladerunner taking a replicant Polaroid selfie, circa 1982.

I'm A Cliche is the brainchild of French dj and producer Cosmo Vitelli. It's Edit Service offers up fortnightly remixes, edits and reworkings of all sorts of stuff by various remix types, often under pseudonyms, putting unofficial goodies into the public domain. Well worth a trawl if you've got a few hours on your hands this weekend. This one, Edit 61 from Front De Cadeaux, seems to be a slow mo version of Max Berlin's Elle Et Moi. The thunking piano chords and snaking horn make nine minutes fifty seconds go by in a very pleasant haze. Free download too.

Unconnected Thoughts On Jacking

Timothy J Fairplay gets the e.p. title of the year (so far) award with this forthcoming 12" release on Crimes Of The Future. Recording as Haunted Doorbell along with Matilda Tristam, Unconnected Thoughts On Jacking is four tracks of rave influenced electronic music, a swirling science fiction dream sequence with a drum machine. Snippets to listen to below.