2024 In Dub

The list making has started. Some of my blogging compadres have already pressed the Best Of 2024 button. At some point before Christmas I will post an end of year review and list. In the meantime, here's some of 2024's highest quality dubwise sounds wrapped up in an hourlong mix- there's much more that could have fitted into this mix too but in the end I wanted to keep it to under sixty minutes. Repetitive, bass heavy, echo- laden and spacious sounds for Sunday. 

2024 In Dub

• Coyote: Living In Heaven
• BTCOP: Sabre 540 (Rude Audio Remix)
• Five Green Moons: Garbage Van Exhaust
• Uj Pa Gaz: Roxy (Hardway Bros Meets Monkton Uptown)
• David Harrow and Little Annie: End Of Times (Rude Audio's Immutable Remix)
• Hugo Nicolson and David Harrow: Revolvalution (Dan Wainwright and Rude Audio VIP Remix)
• Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s: In Minus Shadows
• The Woodentops: Dream On (Rolo's Dub)
• Richard Norris: Fever Dub
• Coyote: OMG

In early December Coyote released a dub 12", two huge dub tracks,Living In Heaven and OMG,  that are in their own description 'light as a feather- heavy as lead'. 

Living in Heaven sounds like it be from side six of Sandinista!, a massive compliment in this household- it also has a touch of the Sabres Of Paradise Ysaebud single. Rattling bassline, echo and vocal sample. Coyote add some strings. Lovely deep stuff

Rude Audio's remix of BTCOP's Sabres 540 came out on Tici Taci in February, a remix that Rude Audio's Mark Ratcliff thinks his among his best work. He's right. 

Five Green Moons is Justin Robertson's latest venture, a post- punk/ pagan dub excursion, an eleven track album that continues to reveal new depths with each play. Justin appears later on too, with a track from the EP he released on the excellent Pamela label in April, four tracks all to some extent infused with dub. 

Uj Pa Gaz is from Tirana, Albania, a Tici Taci recording artist, producer and DJ. Roxy came out in late July and appears here in Hardway Bros Meets Monkton Uptown remix , heavy duty dub action from Sean Johnston and Duncan Gray. There is a very beguiling Middle Eastern melody line that plays out from the start, tumbling percussion, rimshots, delay and the deep hit of dub bass.

David Harrow has turned sixty this year and has celebrated with a release every month, a treasure trove of music emanating from his LA studio. His EP with On U legend Little Annie, the New York post- punk/ dub poet, had the original version of End Of Times, an instrumental, an acapella, and six remixes, two by Rude Audio- the Immutable and Protean Remixes. The Immutable is the dubbier of the two, a dubbed out rhythm underpinning Little Annie's poetry, 'this is not a happy hour'.

And Rude Audio turn up again, their third appearance here, now with the assistance of the wonderful Dan Wainwright. They took a track recorded by two former Andrew Weatherall cohorts- David Harrow and Hugo Nicolson and spun out into psychedelic dub complete with a brain melting ukulele solo. There are Sabres Of Paradise sounds scattered throughout it.

The Woodentops released a new album in April this year, Fruits From The Deep, a deep and rewarding trip under the sea. Dream On was one of the highlights, remixed in dub style by main Woodentop Rolo McGinty. Dream On (Rolo's Dub) starts and ends with an airplane taking off. Flying off to somewhere warm seems like a dream right now. 

Richard Norris' Bandcamp subscription service rewards on a monthly basis, a project that started with his Music For Healing ambient project but has blossomed into other areas, not least his Oracle Sound series of albums. Oracle Sound is (currently) three albums of superb, home grown dub. Fever Dub is from 2024's Oracle Sound Volume Three. 

Fifty Minutes Of Rude Audio

Rude Audio are a shadowy South London musical collective, specialists in dub techno and sleek chuggy cosmic disco. Based around the core of producer Mark Ratcliff, they've been pushing music my way for some time after I stumbled across some tracks in 2017. Since then Mark has become a friend, one of The Flightpath Estate team, and someone I've shared a DJ booth with on several occasions. Mark can actually do all the technical stuff, beat matching and mixing, and it's a pleasure to watch him play records/ CDs. Especially when in the middle of a set when he'll do something like randomly drop in Walk On by Neil Young from 1973's On The Beach amidst a bunch of dubby dance music and cosmic disco tunes. 

Mark's music as Rude Audio has been picking up the right kind of support in recent times. Andrew Weatherall was playing it in 2019 and early 2020. Don Letts has featured Rude Audio tracks in his sets. David Holmes played his and Dan Wainwright's recent remix of Hugo Nicolson and David Harrow at NTS last week, a show you can listen to here. Much of the Rude Audio back catalogue and the tracks below plus the ones mentioned but not included in the mix can all be found at the Rude Audio Bandcamp. 

Fifty Minutes Of Rude Audio

• Revolvalution (Dan Wainwright And Rude Audio VIP Remix)
• Early Morning
• Big Heat
• Big Heat (Bedford Falls Players Remix)
• Railton Ruckus (Bedford Falls Players Remix)
• Rumble On Arab Street
• The Grinning

Revolvalution came out on Higher Ground recently, a seven track EP from the combined talents of Hugo Nicolson and David Harrow- both former Andrew Weatherall right hand men. Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright turned in two very long dubbed out, Sabres style remixes, the VIP the further out there of the pair. Dub bass. Space echo. Bubbles. Backwards ukulele. Dan and Rude Audio have worked together a lot, most extensively on their Psychedelic Science album from 2023, an eight track dub odyssey with Ram Das, The Grateful Dead and David Bowie all featuring as part of their blissed out, widescreen vision. The VIP Remix has the ability to make you feel like you've been up all night and imbibing even if you haven't. 

Early Morning, another Dan Wainwright and Rude Audio collaboration, came out in 2021 on Tici Taci. Slo- mo dub splendour. 

Big Heat was the title track of a 2022 EP that came with two remixes, one by the superb Bedford falls Players, and one from Rich Lane. It also featured Rudely Fresh and an Al McKenzie (from D:Ream) remix of Dust Devil. Big Heat turns up the tempos and the heat, a throbbing, chugging dub techno delight with squelchy bass. Rude Audio have tunes to spare and there are several digital/ CD EPs with B-sides and extra tracks that could easily have made the cut here- but then this mix would have been three hours long. The Bedford Falls Players remix is a joy, full of some of BFP man Mark Cooper's signature sounds and touches, a remix that keeps giving and keeps rewarding.

Bedford Falls Players also remixed the title track from the Railton Ruckus EP, from 2021 (a track also remixed by Hugo Nicolson). Railton Road runs between Brixton and Herne Hill. In the 1970s and 80s the Brixton end was the front line, a hotbed of radicalism, activism, squats, and bass culture. 

Rude Audio have a long standing interest in Middle Eastern sounds and scales. Rumble On Arab Street came out on the Rude Redux EP in 2018 and then again in remixed form on Street Light Interference. The tracks on Rude Redux were the ones that first really captured my attention, To The Sun, To The Half Moon and Pipeline Screaming along with Rumble On Arab Street. 

The Grinning was a vinyl only 7" release on Golden Lion Sounds in 2023, a split single backed with Richard Norris and Findlay Brown. It is a rumbling, tumbling, thumpy piece of dub techno with echo- laden timbales and intense synths quiggles, the musical equivalent of being blinded by the strobe (in a nice way). 

Revolvalution

Hugo Nicolson and David Harrow are both former Andrew Weatherall collaborators. Hugo was Andrew's number one studio right hand and engineer on almost all the early remixes and on the Screamadelica- era Primal Scream songs and One Dove's Morning Dove White album and attendant singles, the words 'ably assisted by Hugo Nicolson' appearing on the sleeve notes of a multitude of Weatherall remixes and productions. David Harrow worked with Andrew a few years later, writing, recording and producing with Andrew as Blood Sugar, Deanne Day and Planet 4 Folk Quartet and releasing in his own right as Technova on the Sabres Of Paradise label. They've come together (arf!) now to release a mammoth, genre busting seven track EP on Brighton's Higher Love- two versions of the track Revolvalution and a slew of mighty remixes. 

Revolvalution is a ten minute epic, a sampledelic, kaleidoscopic riot of electronic psychedelia, with sounds whizzing by in a blur of arpeggios, fizzing synths, lasers, and cartoon- like snatches of voices, underpinned by a non- stop sequencer bassline and four- four drums. Occasionally it shifts, a key change and bass drop accompanied by whoops, and then another shift, a breakdown into squiggles and snares, and then that bassline comes back in, Moroder banging at the door and a helium voice chanting. 

David Harrow provides two of the remixes, the heavy and acidic Square Circle Remix and the percussive, deep dub Circle Squared Remix. Rule Six bring their own take with their remix, some disco stylings and mirror ball action and a sprung bassline straight from the early 80s. 

Hugo and David both spent significant periods of time with Adrian Sherwood and On U Sound, a large part of the reason Andrew was so keen to work with them I'm sure. It's no surprise therefore that dub is present and correct on the EP. Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright put out an album together last year, the dub splendour of Psychedelic Science, and they bring a pair of dub remixes of Revolvalution, cutting the tempo and finding the echo and the space. The Original Remix is a ten minute psychedelic dub excursion, with an opening four minutes of bass, reverberations and FX, that eventually falls apart into a raga, with a lovely sitar solo, shakers and blips and boings. The bass comes back, the rhythm picks up, the springs and whoops return, a Hawaiian guitar glides on top, tropical birds call- its all very lovely and very early 90s Weatherall in spirit.

The Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright VIP Remix is slower and lower, supremely spaced out, with a lazy hip hop drum break, loads of delay and echo, and a reel to reel feel that goes on and on. Grin inducing, head nodding stuff. 

Big Boss Man

Dan Wainwright has featured here a few times in recent years- his album with Rude Audio, Psychedelic Science, was one of last year's highlights, a psychedelic/ dub journey. Dan's music previously occupied the realms of chuggy, trippy, cosmic disco Balearica, like this deliciously dark groove from 2019...

Keep Me Hangin' On (Hardway Bros Swamp Dub)

Since moving to North Wales Dan has stretched out and found other ways of expressing himself and has now recorded an album of stripped down, improvisational acoustic folk songs, just Dan and his ukulele, still a bit trippy, just in a different way. This one is called Big Boss Man and is really rather beautiful. 

Dan's website is here and two songs from the album are already at Bandcamp with the rest out at the end of the month, on leap year's day. 

An Hour Of 2023 In Dub

While starting to consider the end of year lists of records, singles, albums, EPs and gigs it struck me that much of what I've listened to this year has been very dub oriented, the rhythms and sounds of Jamaica and its 2023 diaspora very much near the forefront of everything. As my list making began and the scribbling lengthened and grew, it seemed that a dub stop off in advance of the main event might be a good way to fill this Sunday's slot, an hour of dubby tunes to ease into the day as the week of the shortest days and longest nights approaches. There's loads missing that could have been included, not least the dubs of songs by JIM and Richard Norris' Oracle Sounds album, so this isn't definitive, it's just a version. 

An Hour Of 2023 In Dub

• Katy J. Pearson: Willow's Song (Richard Norris Ritual Mix)
• Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright: El Qasr Dub
• Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s: Lone Raver In Dub
• Sonic Boom and Panda Bear: Edge Of The Edge Dub
• Stinky Jim: Quiet Spillage (The Long Champs Remix)
• Unloved: Thrill me (Justin Robertson's Temple Of Wonders Remix)
• Whitelands: Setting Sun (AR Kane Initiation Dub)
• Electric Blue Vision: Other Skies (Hardway Bros Meet Monkton Uptown Version)
• Dot Allison: Unchanged (Glok Remix)
• African Head Charge: I Chant Too

Katy J. Pearson's cover of Willow's Song came out in several new versions as part of a five disc celebration of the 50th anniversary of The Wicker Man in June. Richard Norris' dub mix is seven minutes of peak 2023 dubiness, the bassline and Katy's voice and that haunting horn all pushed to the fore. Richard's Oracle Sounds Volume 1 has been one of 2023's highlights, an album of  first rate dub sounds and rhythms. Volume 2, due out in February, can be pre- ordered here. 

Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright's Psychedelic Science is one of 2023's best albums, a dub centred collision of South London and North Wales with Ram Dass, David Bowie, Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs and The Grateful Dead stirred into their dub stew. 

Lone Raver In Dub is one of Justin Robertson's from the vaults releases, out digitally as Part 4 of his Deadstock 33s Unreleased Volumes. Fast rocking dub from September 2023. 

Sonic Boom and Panda Bear's Reset album was remixed by Adrian Sherwood in full, the 60s bubblegum pop fed through the On U Sound dub machine to fine effect. Like Oracle Sounds Volume 1 an album that really reveals itself fully on vinyl. 

Stinky Jim's Social Awareness album came out as a follow up remix album in July, the original album remixed and dubbed out. Stinky Jim's dub comes all the way from Auckland, New Zealand, remixed in dub  style here by Welsh wizard The Long Champs. 

Unloved's Polychrome was a nine song album from early 23, a follow up to 2022's The Pink Album. The remixes followed a month later with Justin Robertson's taking the road to Scratch and Tubby, a rocking dub skank. 

Whitelands are a shoegaze band on Sonic Cathedral. In June a 10" single with remixes by returning shoegaze/ dreampop heroes AR Kane found its way into the wild, Rudy and Alex finding acres of dub space in among the wash of guitars. 

Electric Blue Vision, Jesse Fahnestock and Emilia Harmony, put out their Other Skies EP in November, an end of year hit in certain quarters of the internet, including this one. Hardway Bros and Monkton (Sean Johnston and Duncan Gray) often pull skanking rabbits out of dub hats when remixing together. This is among the year's best. 

Dot Allison's Consciousology, also on Sonic Cathedral, is an indie folk/ psyche/ dreamy meeting of melody and poetic lyrics. For this remix Andy Bell in GLOK guise found the dub heart of the song, somewhere in the similar cosmos as Brendan Lynch's 1993 remix of Paul Weller's Kosmos.

Aftican Head Charge's A Trip To Bolgatanga is a 2023 high spot, ten of the latest stop off points on Bonjo's four decade voyage with Adrian Sherwood.

Forty Five Minutes of Speaking Voices

I had the misfortune recently to see an advert on TV with the voice of Alan Watts is being used to sell cruises for the Cunard shipping company. Watts was a writer, speaker and philosopher who did much in the 1950s and 60s to popularise Eastern philosophies in the west. His lectures and speeches have been widely available for a long time, not least since the rise of Youtube. His son tries to control the use of them through an Alan Watts website where they can be downloaded when paid for, so presumably Cunard paid for the use of Alan's voice rather than just ripping it from Youtube. The advert chops up Watts' speech and misses the end section entirely, not surprisingly, (knowingly) misrepresenting the message of the original, selling a luxury cruise on the high seas as the dream Watts speaks of. I'm not here to complain about advertising, it's a bit late in the day for that. Watts' voice and speeches are instantly recognisable and catnip for use in media where his message, accent and speaking voice and rhythms are striking and attention grabbing. 

I came across this clip this week too, writer Paul Bowles interviewed in 1970 about a trance dance and self mutilation he witnessed while resident in Morocco. Bowles left the USA in 1947 and settled in Tangier, recording local musicians and writing. His novel The Sheltering Sky came out in 1949, turned into an epic film by Bernardo Bertolucci in 1990 (I read the book and saw the film at the time and enjoyed both but don't remember much about either now so need to revisit). Bowles' speaking voice, like Alan Watts, very much lends itself to being set to music, not just the content but the tone and timbre and patterns of speech. Which led to think that speaking voices set to music would make a good longform mix.

The mix below is forty five minutes of speaking voices set to music, sometimes where voice and music have been specifically made for and recorded with each other and sometimes where the voice has been taken from earlier recordings and sampled. I could probably find enough to make a second at some point in the future. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Speaking Voices

• Jon Hopkins, Ram Dass and East Forest: Sit Around The Fire
• 10:40: The First Step
• Coyote: The Outsider
• David Holmes and Jon Hopkins ft. Stephen Rea: Elsewhere Anchises
• Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright: Be Love
• Steve Queralt and Michael Smith: Chaldean Oracle
• Steve Queralt and Michael Smith: Glitches (Flug 8 Remix)
• Fireflies and Joe Duggan: Leonard Cohen Knows

Sit Around The Fire is the closing track on Jon Hopkins 2022 Music For Psychedelic Therapy, the voice of guru and writer Ram Dass talking about spiritual discovery through sitting round the fire and staring at the flames, while Hopkins' slow piano chords and sound of wood burning and crackling drift by. 

The First Step came out on Higher Love Vol. 2 last year, a 10:40 track that borrows a Bertrand Russell interview and layers a slow burning groove and wash around it, growing in emotion with nods to Elvis and Spiritualized. Russell speaks of acting and of doing in spite of doubt and in the absence of religion.  Magical stuff. 

Coyote are masters of sampling voices and building beautiful Balearic songs around them. This one takes Alan Watts talking about artists, work, states of evolution and sane and insane societies, adds some lovely acoustic guitar, and pays tribute to Andrew Weatherall (who styled himself as The Outsider when writing for Boy's Own back in the late 80s). The Outsider is the last song on their 2021 album The Mystery Light, a highly recommended record. 

Elsewhere Anchises is from David Holmes' Late Night Tales, a stunning 2016 compilation album that pulled together nineteen songs of life and loss, spanning Buddy Holly and David Crosby to Eat Light Become Light and songs David made for the album. On Elsewhere Anchises actor Stephen Rea speaks the words of Seamus Heaney over David's ambient backdrop, the sound of something quite special taking place. 

Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright have released one of this year's best dub/ dub techno/ psychedelia albums, Psychedelic Science. Be Love opens the album with the voice of Ram Dass making his second appearance on this mix. 

Steve Queralt and Michael Smith released the four track EP Sun Moon Town last year, Ride bassist Steve writing and recording four very different pieces of music and Hartlepool born writer and flaneur Michael narrating his own tales of adventures and wanderings in the 21st century, a place and time that seems quite bewildering to him. The Flug 8 remix comes from this year's remix package, a dissection of late stage capitalism and advertising agency dreams you can dance to.  

Fireflies is one of Nina Walsh's musical outlets, a South London based collective. The voice is that of Joe Duggan, Derry born and resident of Crystal Palace. 'If anyone knows', Joe says, 'Leonard Cohen knows'. 

Social Awareness

Last year New Zealand dub purveyor Stinky Jim (Jim Pinkney) released Spacial Awareness, a twelve track remix and dub excursion that left few stones unturned- I reviewed it here. Jim has been busy enlisting remixers to his cause and to celebrate his birthday two days ago, Tuesday, he released the remix album available digitally and hopefully on vinyl too soon. Social Awareness has sixteen remixes and dub versions, new takes on the tracks from Spatial Awareness. 

This one is by regular visitors to these pages Rude Audio. Sand Gestures (Rude Audio Remix) continues in the same vein as Mark's recent outstanding dub album with Dan Wainwright, Psychedelic Science, an album which blurred the lines between dub, The Grateful Dead, Ram Dass, The Merry Pranksters and David Bowie. Never one for brevity Mark's Rude Audio remix is ten minutes thirty seconds of bass, bubbling synths, rimshots, echo and tripped out forwards progression. There's an insistent synth squiggle that weaves its way to the front and pushes along with the rhythm. Click play and then let it run on and on. 

Another highlight is The Long Champs remix of Quiet Spillage, six minutes of electrifying dub sounds, woozy organ, descending bass and a twisted horn part- I love the breakdown at the end, everything dropping out to leave the kick drum rattling/ thumping away. The original version of Quiet Spillage is a delight, a funky exotica/ dub crossover, music for cocktails and grooving. 

Quiet Spillage

The sixteen track Social Awareness including remixes and dubs by Solar Tropics, Amamelia, Tim Prebble, Seekers International, Jefferson Belt and Strange Flesh among others is at Bandcamp. Happy belated birthday Stinky Jim. 

Monday's Long Songs

Last Friday saw the release of Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright's new album Psychedelic Science. Mark and Dan recorded it holed up in North Wales and brought into being an album which marries dub with 60s psychedelia and the voices of American guru Ram Dass and Ken Kesey's bus driver Ken Babbs'. Not only do they manage to pull those seemingly disparate ingredients together into a cohesive whole but Psychedelic Science is already sounding like one of the albums of the summer. 

The album opens with Be Love, a slo- mo, blissed out dub groove with the voice of Ram Dass setting the scene for what follows over the next eight songs, an eight minute excursion that sounds like waking up after you've had exactly the right amount of sleep to find the sun shining and the day ahead looking good.

Over the course of the next six songs Mark and Dan take their chunky, cosmic dub to new places- from the bassline led, sci fi cover of The Grateful Dead's Fire On The Mountain to the chuggy bounce of The Fever and the off kilter, bass rumble of El Qasr. They cover Bowie's Heroes, a spoken word dub cover no less, with Ken Babbs from the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test on vocals. 

Control has a lovely snaking melody, chopped up vocals and wandering bass. On the spaced out Talking To The Sun Dan sings, his voice cut through the glorious fug. Finally, they reach some of kind of conclusion with the closing track, the twenty minute Patience Dub (A Prog Odyssey), the kind of thing that in lesser hands would be too much. Mark and Dan make a twenty minute track seem, if anything, too short. Music to be enveloped by and to drift away to. Buy Psychedelic Science digitally or on CD at Bandcamp. 

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.

Monday's Long Songs

This is a new edit from Dan Wainwright, a psychedelic Indian epic, Shanti Shanti Shanti. There's something about Indian sounds that lends themselves to trippy, long form music- the drones, the scales, the percussion and the strings- that goes back to the 60s and then the late 80s and early 90s.



Four Tet's music, especially his 2015 Morning/ Evening album is a delight, comes from a similar place, the Morning side especially, a piece of music I never tire of hearing. The looped vocal, a Lata Mangeshkar sample, played over Four Tet's intricate dance rhythms and raga mode, are a total joy. I've posted this fairly recently but it's too good not to share again.

Om Nama Shivaya And My Future

Some brand new chuggy electronic psychedelic goodies today, heavy grooves and trippy sounds as standard, courtesy of Dan Wainwright, Rude Audio and Stash Magnetic. Dan's new e.p. Om Nama Shivaya is out on Oddball Records. If you order it at QRates you can help crowdfund the vinyl release. Rude Audio's remix of the title track is a dubby, slow motion, psyched out beast, acidic squiggles, chanting and sitars. Very nice indeed.



Dan has remixed My Future by Stash Magnetic, an experimental Darkwave/ electro/ art rock duo based in London. Dan's dub remix is one of four on the new release, out on Field Of Dreams and also including an excellent remix by Richard Sen. The remix is a very slowed down take, lurching along with voices whooshing around in the mix, a crashing drumbeat, cavernous space and a spine tingling piano/vocal breakdown. The digital e.p. is at Bandcamp.

Les Yeux Orange · PREMIERE :  Stash Magnetic - My Future (Dan Wainwright Dub Remix)

Isolation Mix Eleven

This week's mix is made up entirely of songs released during lockdown, since mid- March 2020. Some of them have been written and recorded during this period. I could easily have doubled the length of this so maybe I'll come back to this and do a part two. This one has the trippy psyche of Sonic Boom, dusty funk desert blues from Ess O Ess, some dubby jazz (or jazzy dub) courtesy of Jah Wobble, Number's post- punk dance stance, yet more excellence from Weatherall and Walsh's Woodleigh Research Facility, Justin Robertson and Sofia Hedblom's blend of Nigerian rhythms and electronic dub, Dan Wainwright's pagan chug and some Balearic bliss from Joe Morris, Rich Lane, The Long Champs and a cover by Rheinzand. There's one segue which is a bit of a mess but it'll have to do. Life has surface noise and all that.



Sonic Boom: Just Imagine
Ess O Ess and Saul Richards: Totem (Swamp Crawl)

Jah Wobble: Lockdown 5 (Forbearance)

Number: Red Flag

Woodleigh Research Facility: Karra Mesh

Formerlover: Correction Dub

Dan Wainwright: A Blessing

Joe Morris: The New Dawn Will Come

Rich Lane: Barry Island (The Long Champs Dub)

Rheinzand: All By Myself

Rituals

Dan Wainwright has been in flood mode during lockdown, a torrent of releases and tracks on Bandcamp. The latest is his best yet, a four track e.p. on Amsterdam's Night Noise label. The opener is Raindance, a full on chugging piano banger, night noise indeed. Second track Ceremony, which grows in intensity, has didgeridoo, space, bass, Space Invaders FX and eventually a violin, a controlled freak out. The Joe Morris Dubwise remix of Raindance is exactly what it says, Joe slowing it down, spacing everything out, dropping some lovely trippy piano in and piling the echo onto the drums and percussion. It's a funny coincidence that when I last posted something by Dan I paired his Peace Of Mind and Get Higher releases with a new two track release from Joe, the laid back Balearica of The New Dawn Will Come. Now the two of them are united on one release.

The track that really raises the hairs and hits the heights at the moment is the third one, A Blessing, which starts out as an acid monster, dark noises likely to end up with the carpet worn out under your feet, synth sounds beamed in from left and right, the tension building for several minutes. Then unexpectedly the ceremony begins with bells, finger cymbals and chanting and the definite whiff of incense before the groove returns and the dark acid kicks back in. 2020 dance music and ancient ritual combined.

The New Dawn Will Come

Some new music for Sunday, downtempo, blissed out and chasing the Balearic beat. Joe Morris is a Leeds based DJ and producer who has created two new tracks quickly during the lockdown and they are a perfect sounding pair, bass and drums padding away and some lovely optimistic piano.



Dan Wainwright is on a creative roll, producing one new thing after another. Peace Of Mind is a slowed down, cosmic, synth voyage, like sunshine coming through the trees, a feeling of contentment and the knowledge that whatever comes tomorrow can be dealt with.



Get High is more direct and built for dancing, wonky, off kilter new beat.

How To Have A Bath

As our lives are restricted the simple pleasures become more important and everyday task that previously were automatic and functional become more significant and central to our lives, the part of our days we can look forward to and get excited about. Cooking a meal suddenly takes on a new centrality twice a day. People have been praising the benefits of slow living for some time- slow food, slow TV and so on- and now it's enforced we can all see the benefits.

Dan Wainwright's How To Have A Bath (Parts 1- 4) is a bit of downtempo, Balearic fun. I shouldn't think he intended it to coincide with life in lockdown Britain when he wrote it but it seems to fit with the new pace of our lives. Dan's put quite a few tracks and e.p.s out in the last few weeks and much of it is available at 'name your own price' at his Bandcamp page at Oddball records.

The Effect

Something altogether darker and less earthbound today, a remix from a forthcoming Dan Wainwright e.p.  by John Paynter (who runs a night/site called A Space Age Freak Out). Percussive, chugging science fiction with a springy bass, theremin action and noises zooming in and out, sounds beamed in from space and bouncing around from the red planet to the Sea of Tranquillity, from Convair Aeronautics to mission control.

You Don't Really Need Me

This is from a new e.p. by Dan Wainwright (a resident of these parts apparently) a slice of cosmic, Eastern tinged, progressive chug which, at some point in the fourth minute when the soft multi-tracked vocal comes in, reveals itself to be a cover of The Supremes classic Keep Me Hangin' On.



The e.p. then takes a turn into darker territory with a Hardway Bros remix, a moody, low slung groover, the appropriately titled Swamp Dub, which sounds just like a sweaty basement after hours. In a good way.



There's a third track too, The Endless Process Of Release, starting out with synths and coo'd breathy backing vox, some lovely sequenced bass and then a mid-tempo beat gently pushing things forward, various percussive sounds reverberating round the mix, more roof terrace in the sun than cellar rave, until it all starts to build for the last few minutes, twinkling arpeggios and rushing bleeps.