Forty Minutes Of Fearless And Vegas

I took this photo the other day by accident with my phone in my pocket. There were several and a couple of short videos too but this was the pick of the bunch- someone said, 'it's like you have a portal to another dimension in your pocket'. If only I'd known it was there all along. It looks very much like a record sleeve too, maybe one by The Cocteau Twins, definitely something on 4AD. Anyway, I like it but despite my best efforts haven't been able to recreate it. For now, the portal remains closed. 

How about some dystopian disco for your Sunday? Earlier this week Jesse questioned whether the new Ron Trent album is actually any good and rather than being the Balearic masterpiece it is being lauded as (not least here), it is actually more akin to the incidental music from 80s US cop shows, Miami Vice when it went soft or Magnum P.I. perhaps. I think with Balearic and ambient music there's always a danger of slipping over the line into bland New Age cocktail bar music but I guess everyone's line is in a different place. I've got a couple of Balearic compilations with songs and tracks where I can feel my younger self shaking his head and wondering what has happened. 

There's no danger of the music in today's mix being labelled soft focus, pastel anti- jazz. In recent years Richard Fearless, both solo and in his Death In Vegas guise, has made some very anxiety inducing, tense and dystopic ambient/ industrial/ minimal techno. Sheets of metal, cavernous reverb, subterranean synths, icily detached vocals from Sasha Grey, thick urban fog, night terrors, dancing in a damp deserted warehouse somewhere in East London with one lightbulb flickering on and off... it's all here. Plus Chris and Cosey, formerly of Throbbing Gristle, on remix duties and Richard's beautifully mournful piano house remix of Django Django. It's all very intense but also perfectly executed and very cathartic. 

Forty Minutes Of Richard Fearless And Death In Vegas

• Richard Fearless: Driving With Roedelius
• Richard Fearless: Earth Tapes
• Death In Vegas: Honey
• Death In Vegas: Consequences of Love (Chris And Cosey Remix)
• Death In Vegas: You Disco I Freak
• Django Django: Giant (Richard Fearless remix)
• Richard Fearless: Gamma Ray

The opening pair of tracks are from the recent Deep Rave Memory and Future Rave Memory albums. Consequences Of Love and You Disco I Freak were on 2016's Transmission album. Honey and Gamma Ray were standalone singles from 2018 and 2014 respectively. The Django Django remix dates from 2016 but was only released properly in 2020. 

Giant

As well as the unreleased Andrew Weatherall remix they put out at the end of October, London/ Scotland art- rockers Django Django released some remixes back in 2016 for Record Shop Day including ones by Tim Burgess, Peaking Lights and Richard Fearless. I only discovered this e.p. recently having gone looking for the Weatherall one and it seems that this is the first time these have been available digitally, the RSD release being a 500 copies only vinyl release. The Richard Fearless remix is a peach, a repetitive, piano- house, post- acid house banger, built around two repeated parts- the first an ascending keyboard riff over thumping machine drums and the second a piano part pinched from the glory days that sends you to that happy/ sad place on the edge of the dancefloor, hedonism and a vague sense of regret in equal measure. Fearless switches between the two perfectly. 

Marble Skies

 

This previously unreleased Andrew Weatherall remix dates from 2018 when London band Django Django put out their third album, Marble Skies. I have no idea why it has been lying in the vaults for so long but now eight months after Mr Weatherall left us it's seeing the light of day which is a good thing. A nine minute piano led thumper, with some huge sounding tom toms and lots of extraneous of noise surrounding the melodies. The kick drum pounds away and a snippet of vocal , a whoop or a syllable, is looped and repeated. It's all a bit of a long, euphoric blur. Andrew's remix of Marble Skies is only out digitally as far as I can see- you can buy it for 99p here.  

Django Remix

While playing catch-up with stuff I've missed over the last couple of weeks I found this- Daniel Avery remixing Django Django, some banging techno in a Sheffield early 90s style. One for the back room of the club.

Django Django

From East London via Edinburgh (or the other way around) come Django Django, who have been rather lazily described as a cross between The Beta Band and Hot Chip. Don't hear the Hot Chip comparisons too much myself but they are reminiscent of The Beta Band but with more drums and percussion. Django Django's debut album came out last week- I haven't got it yet- so this is from their debut single back in 2009. Reckon they may be worth watching, there's a quite a lot going on here.

Storm