Forty Five More Minutes Of Edits

In recent weeks I've done two Sunday mixes made up of edits. Part One is here and Part Two is here. Today is Part Three, another forty five minutes of edits, this one largely dancefloor oriented and with an 80s feel. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Edits Mix Three

• Can't Cope (Cotton Bud Re- Master)
• No- Thing
• M&M Hardway Bros
• Swamp Shuffle
• Never Let Me Down (Hunterbrau Edit)
• Jackie (Cotton Dub)
• Longed

Can't Cope is from Jezebell's Jezebellaeric Beats Vol. 1, a dubbed out and spaced out way to enter into the mix, our friend the Archdrude Julian H. Cope sent spinning even further out into the cosmos than he was previously. Safesurfer is from 1991's epic Peggy Suicide, the start of Julian's imperial period. Swamp Shuffle is also from Jezebellaeric Beats Vol. 1, the closing track, this time David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Jerry Harrison and Chris Frantz given the treatment by Jesse and Darren. 

No- Thing is from Resident Rockers, the in- house edit team at Eclectics. Heroes. Twin Peaks. Moby. Acid. No- thing will keep us together. 

The M&M Hardway Bros edit takes Sleaford Mods Mork and Mindy, a song from 2020's Spare Ribs, with Billy Nomates on guest vocals, a tale of a childhood spent in colourless suburban council estates, Action Man and Cindy and mum and dad being out, long afternoons with nothing to do. Sean monkeyed about with it and turned it into an ALFOS at The Golden Lion moment. 

Hunterbrau's edit of Depeche Mode's 1987 classic Never Let Me Down came out on Paisley Dark, dark disco/ slowed down sleek goth.

Rich Lane's Cotton Dubs are second to none. His edit of Sinead O'Connor's Jackie (from her debut, the Lion And Then Cobra) repurposes Sinead with an 808 while losing none of her power. 

Longed is an edit of All Day Long from New Order's 1986 album Brotherhood. The chopped, looped and edited version here, largely instrumental, is from an intriguing project I was tipped off about on Bandcamp, a highly unofficial edit service by Follytechnic Music Library. Longed is from a collection of New Order edits called Ordered 86- 93 but there's waaaay more there than just one album of nine New Order edits. Have a dig around, see what you can unearth. 

Hunterbräu

Out with the old, in with the new. 2024 starts with this...

This Is A Knife is by Hunterbräu, surging, chuggy acid with bleeps, crunchy guitar, music made for end of night moments in DJ sets and coming direct from South Manchester. It's from a nine track strong compilation on Argentine label Logia, which you can find here, released at the end of December 2023. Ones to watch for '24, both Hunterbräu and Logia along with the artists included in the Logia V.A. III, from opener TJ Lawton's Our Time and everything that comes afterwards. There's also this by Hunterbräu, O Belisk, which gets everything jangling a little, intense and wiggy, dark electronic music. 

Hunterbräu is also responsible for this slo mo, sultry, dark disco edit of Depeche Mode's Never Let Me Down which you can get at a name your own price deal at Paisley Dark. Hunterbräu's sharp ear and knack for remodelling 80s goth tinged pop into modern shapes also takes in this acidic makeover of Siouxsie's Cities In Dust. 

Forty Minutes Of Depeche Mode

I recently watched 101, D.A. Pennebaker's documentary film from 1989 that showed the group preparing to play the 101st gig and final leg of their world tour the year before. It was good fun, a time capsule peak into the world of 1988, with a van of radio competition winners travelling to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena to see DM with live snippets of the group interspersed. 

It's fair to say that I'm a fan of some of Depeche Mode's songs rather than an outright fan of the band. Their story is interesting, electro- pop boys from Basildon who survive the departure of their songwriter becoming a pop sensation and then a stadium size electronic rock group. The death of Andy Fletcher last year showed a fairly unique aspect of the group too- Fletcher was the man who made the group work but whose contributions weren't predominantly musical. For the mix below I've concentrated on the late 80s/ early 90s era of the group, mainly singles with some remixes. I seem to have omitted Personal Jesus which is an error on my part. 

Forty Minutes Of Depeche Mode

• Happiest Girl (Orbital Mix)
• Never Let Me Down Again (Tsangarides Mix)
• I Feel You (7" version)
• Enjoy The Silence (Rich Lane A&E Cotton Dub)
• Blasphemous Rumours
• Barrel Of A Gun (Underworld Soft Mix)

From 1990 The Orb's remix of Happiest Girl confusingly titled as the Orbital Mix (how both The Orb and Orbital mist have wished the other had chosen a different name). The remix is typically Orb- like, downtempo ambient house with Dave Gahan's words on top. As well as a 12" single in 1990, it came out on The Orb's compilation of their own remixes in 1996, alongside a welter of other remixes- Pop Will Eat Itself, Erasure, Killing Joke, Primal Scream, Yello, Innersphere and Wir all feature. 

Never Let Me Down is a throbbing, growling, druggy electro- rock single from 1987 and from their Music For The Masses album. The Tsangarides mix is from the 12", a remix by Chris Tsangarides. My favourite DM song, one that has worked its way into my musical world in recent years. 

I Feel You was a 1993 single, screeching tyres, glitter stomp and blues guitar riff. 

Enjoy The Silence was a 1990 single and from their massive 1991 album Violator. Synths, monochrome gloom, a lush darkness made for those sunset moments in stadia round the world- along with Personal Jesus it's the 90s Mode in excelsis. The version here is a re- edit by Stoke- on - Trent's Rich Lane, a man who knows his way round a re- edit better than most. 

Blasphemous Rumours came out in 1984, a song about suicide, survival and religion that baited the religious, including those in the band. The crunchy synth sound and industrial drums show the way ahead. 

Barrel Of A Gun was a single in 1997, the lead song for their Ultra album. Underworld's remixes, three of them, showed the two sides of late 90s Underworld- the Hard Mix is nine minutes of thumping, hard and fast drums that don't let up. The Soft mix (included here) is Underworld in dreamy, floaty mode and proof that Underworld were still capable of great remixes and of creating some lovely, low key, intimate moments.

Six Months

Isaac died six months ago today. I'm not sure what this means- the marking of dates and passing of time have a special significance, I'm always aware of them. On the one hand, six months seems like quite a long time when written down, it's half a year, give it another six months and we'll be about to see December in. On the other hand, it all seems very recent, it could in some ways have happened only a few weeks ago. The thought that just over six months ago we could talk to him, hold his hand, go out for a walk and stop off somewhere for a pint and some chips... it all seems very real and yet, he's definitely gone, we've accepted that. On a day to day basis we can operate and function, we can go out and see friends, do 'normal' things, have fun even. When we go to his grave it all seems very huge, the enormity of it all, his death and his absence. The time we've travelled since he died and the coping with it prove that only time can make the difference and that the Nick Cave quote that I've mentioned a couple of times holds much truth for me. On his blog Nick said 'in time, there is a way, not out of grief, but deep within it'. Every day, each day we go forward in time, Isaac is a day further away physically, but in lots of ways he's always there. In the end we just learn to live with the grief. So, six months is both significant and also just another day. It still hurts- it always will. We go on. 

It seems appropriate to pay tribute to yet another musical passing. Last Thursday news came through of the sudden death of Andy Fletcher of Depeche Mode. Depeche Mode's run of singles and albums from the early 80s and into the 90s is the stuff of synthpop and then stadium electro goth legend and I've grown to appreciate them and their music in recent years. On top of that no- one seems to have a bad word to say about Andy, a genuinely nice man, happy to talk to fans, popular with his peers and seemingly the glue that held the group together.

R.I.P. Andy Fletcher. 

A while ago I saw a clip of Depeche Mode performing Never Let Down Again on a TV show and I can't remember what TV programme it was but this one, somewhere in Europe in 1987, will do instead. Huge groove, killer tune, leather jackets, somewhere between industrial, New Beat and synth pop.

And seeing as Rich himself has been sharing this since Thursday I thought I'd help spread it a little further- Rich's own edit of Enjoy The Silence, a recent dance floor oriented update on the 1989 single. 

Enjoy The Silence (Rich Lane A&E Cotton Dub)

Never Let Me Down Again

This is a rather tasty update of a 1987 Depeche Mode song from Rhythm Scholar, a song that saw the Basildon band enter the top ten all over Europe and move into the world of full on, all the medals, stadium groups. Rhythm Scholar keeps Dave Gahan's vocal , a bunch of drug references essentially, and some of the menace of the original and adds layers of sound, stretching it out, euphorically.

I wasn't much of a fan of Depeche Mode as a youngster. Their 80s electro-pop records sound much better to me now, now I've got some distance (maybe that's me not them). I found their 90s stadium rock stuff pretty uninteresting too but even that has some appeal to me now. 

Lot To Say

Yesterday was quite eventful in its own way. I didn't get up early and go to queue up outside Piccadilly Records for Record Shop Day. I went for a bike ride and managed 45km in the sunshine. Very nice. Then at about 2.00 pm I went into town and popped into Piccadilly Records where I got the Andrew Weatherall remix of Noel Gallagher's In The Heat Of The Moment and the Timothy J Fairplay and Scott Fraser remixes of Finitribe's 101 (on bright orange vinyl), both of which I wanted. The 7" single of Johnny Marr's cover of Depeche Mode's I Feel You had long since sold out.



In a way I wasn't too bothered. I expected it would be sold out and I'm not sure I like it that much anyway. The mechanical guitar riff is good but I was never very fond of the stadium rock Depeche Mode and don't especially like the song.

Looking at the list of releases for Record Shop Day 2015 it looked to me like at least half of them were re-issues, in some cases of albums which really don't need re-issuing as they're widely available anyway. Stuff that is actually new was in a minority. Piccadilly records was extremely busy, large numbers of young folk, make and female. I hope they keep buying records and that this isn't just a retro-fad.

Tim Burgess of The Charlatans was in the record shop, just hanging about. He was interviewed by Sky News roving vinyl news team and was due to dj in store at 5. A few people asked for pictures and autographs. I browsed a little bit and then went for a cup of tea at the Manchester Coffee Co. just down Oldham Street towards Piccadilly Gardens. As I ordered my brew I noticed Tim having a coffee at the back and ten minutes later as he left we had a chat- about me seeing The Charlatans at The Albert Halls a few weeks back, me seeing them in 1989 ('wow' he said, 'long time ago'), Record Shop Day and my purchases, and the fact that he was djing while United play Chelsea (we lost, one-nil. Weakened team due to injuries, away from home, played fairly well, not too disappointed). I have to say, he seemed like a lovely fella.

This is from The Charlatans recent Modern Nature lp. If you haven't got it, you're missing out.

Lot To Say

By the time I wanted to go home the tram system southbound was down so I had to get a bus. A bus. I haven't been on a service bus for years.

This is a Charlatans single from 2008, when no-one was interested anymore. Oh Vanity is Time Is Tight crossed with New Order and there's nowt wrong with that.