Fifty Minutes Of Edits Volume Two

Another Sunday mix of edits to follow the one from two weeks ago (here). The first one was quite thumpy. This one is more dubbed out, more blissed out and laid back, more drifty, featuring a similar and familiar cast of edit- creators. There's plenty of material unused sitting in my downloads folders too so volume three is only a matter of time. 

Fifty Minutes Of Edits Volume Two

• Nine Million Rainy Days (Los Lopez Edit)
• One Way To Go (10:40's So High It Hurts Edit)
• Inner Meet Me (10:40's Outer Hebrides Dub)
• Kate's Bush (Nocturnal Edit)
• Steppers Rock
• Totem Edits 19 Medicine
• Edit To The Siren
• Totem Edits 18 Air

The Los Lopez edit of The Jesus And Mary Chain's 9 Million Rainy Days first came my way well over a decade ago, 2013 I think, Jim and William's misanthropy/ existential despair set to an electronic throb. 'As far as I can tell/ I'm being dragged from here to hell/ All my time in hell is spent with you', Jim mutters (on 1987's Darklands originally). This is the diametric opposite of the feelings and sentiment expressed in the widescreen, gloriously romantic, panoramic love that propels the fourth track in this mix. 

Jesse Fahnestock is 10:40. He recut a very early Verve song, One Way To Go (a B-side to the Wigan quartet's first release, the magnificent sky scraping northern psychedelia of All In The Mind). Jesse looped it up and set the controls for the heart of the dub. On hearing it I said to Jesse he should re- edit all of the early Verve's music as dub extravaganzas- A Dub In Heaven. I'm still waiting. His edit of The Beta Band's Inner Meet Me came out on Paisley Dark in 2021, a song from The Patty Patty Sound, one of those unearthly EPs The Beta Band released in 1997/ 1998 when they looked like the future of leftfield music, a completely new way of doing things. 

Coyote's edit of Nocturn was one of my favourite records of 2022, a swooning, deep sea dive into the cosmos. Or something. Their Magic Wand edit releases, vinyl only, are always top drawer. I love the way it starts off with one beat and then switches tempo, like the speed selector being suddenly flipped from 33 to 45. Nocturn was on Kate's 2005 album Aerial. 'We stand in the Atlantic/ We become panoramic/ We tire of the city/ We tire of it all/ We long for that just something more'. Yep, I know that feeling.

Steppers Rock came out on the recently revived Eclectics label, based in Bournemouth and the start of what promises to be one to watch. 

Totem Edits are the work of Leo Zero and Justin Deighton, a weekly treasure trove. Last week they dropped a Balearic/ cowboy stomp edit of Big Audio Dynamite's  Medicine Show (an all timer of a song for me). Air (from a week earlier) is John Martyn's Solid Air recut beautifully. I've been in a John Martyn phase recently, Solid Air and One World. By all accounts a terrible and flawed person but the music...

Edit To The Siren performs the possibly sacrilegious feat of taking This Mortal Coil's Song To The Siren and turns it into a dubbed out/ late night Balearic treat. The work of In The Valley. Wobbly. 

The Wheatsheaf

Today's derelict pub is The Wheatsheaf, a hostelry on the edge of Altrincham, a town that has been reborn in recent years. It's high street suffered the fate of many small town high streets and with Manchester city centre a tram ride away and the Trafford Centre even closer, shops moved out. Since the mid 2010s its market hall has turned into an indie gastro food hall and the surrounding area now teems with bars and restaurants, nick knack shops and a vintage market. None of this saved The Wheatsheaf, a mile out of town on a bend towards Broadheath (an area with several pubs within walking distance). The Wheatsheaf had the added attraction of pygmy goats in its beer garden- no idea what happened to them. For all I know they could be still there- they could have chewed their way out by now and be living quite happily in the boarded up pub.

We used to do a pub quiz in a pub down the road, The Old Packet House, four of us every Monday for years. One Monday and found the Packet closed for redecoration. 'The Wheatsheaf has one', Pete said and we all trotted up the road. The pub was full of local teams, we were definitely outsiders from the moment we walked in. We bought our beers, paid our entrance fee and got our answer sheet. An hour and a bit later we'd won the quiz. This didn't go down especially well with the rest of the teams. As winners, we got to do the Play Your Cards Right round and won that too. This gave us the opportunity to rummage in a cloth bag, pick a key and see if it opened the box that held the cash, cash paid by everyone's entrance fees, the money building up each week if it wasn't won. I stepped forward to choose a key from the bag- there were only three keys in the bag. Embarrassingly the key I chose opened the box so we won the cash as well as the quiz. We slunk out without staying for a celebratory drink, everyone else glaring at us. 

The diametric opposite of pub quizzes and derelict pubs is the voice of Elizabeth Fraser and her five track mini- album that came out earlier this year. Written and recorded with her musical and romantic partner Damon Reece, the duo calling themselves Sun's Signature, the five songs are a fully realised song set, Liz's voice set in a rich setting of folk music and chamber music with timpani, strings, Moog, mellotron and tom toms. I'd missed this and was alerted to it by friend of the blog Spencer. This song, Golden Air, is a joy, like turning to your face the skies and having warm honey drizzled over it by the sun. 

Sun's Signature came out in July and has now been re-issued in an extended package with remixes from sympathetic souls. Gwenno, Welsh psych/ folk/ synth artist (who records songs in Cornish as well as Welsh) has remixed Golden Air, taking something already fairly close to transcendent and making it moreso. 

There is an orchestral remix of Apples by Will Gregory of Goldfrapp, and others from John Grant, CUTS and Hinako Omori, all taking Elizabeth and Damon's songs elsewhere while retaining their original character. But of them all, I recommend this one, the LUMP remix of Bluedusk is an electronic/ cosmische working of the song, as if Liz Fraser were fronting Kraftwerk or Factory era OMD. You can buy or listen to Sun's Signature (Extended) here. 

Monday's Long Song

In August 1994 Future Sound Of London released Lifeforms as a single, an edited version actually ending up being played on Top Of The Pops with a none- more 1994 computer graphics video. Lifeforms was recorded with Cocteau Twin Elizabeth Fraser on vocals- but Liz ended up expressing some dissatisfaction with the final result, saying she sang her heart out for 'eleven fucking hours' but her vocal ended up sounding like a sample. FSOL's Brian Duggan disagreed. 

The full EP release came in seven parts, Paths 1- 7, sequenced as one long ambient piece. The original version was Path 3 (coming in with a tempo change at eleven minutes forty in the download below and the edited single version Path 4 (about twenty minutes in). It was also judged by the Guinness Book of Records to be the first to be the first internet download.

Lifeforms Paths 1- 7

Lifeforms is a very good piece of ambient/ ambient house- experimental, futuristic, ambitious and richly layered, a little time locked to the mid- 90s maybe but very enjoyable and engaging with tribal drums, birdsong, thumping kickdrum, tabla courtesy of Talvin Singh, piano and synths and multiple shifts in pace, tone and tempo.  

Half An Hour Of Liz Fraser

Liz Fraser's voice, whether with The Cocteau Twins or guest appearances with other artists, is a unique, almost miraculous thing. Trying to describe it is fairly pointless. It swoops and soars and has a magical, otherworldly quality. Sometimes it's gossamer thin, distant and a part of the shimmering, hazy swirl of the Cocteau Twins records, the lyrics difficult to work out and impressionistic. Sometimes it's much bolder and in the foreground, clear and insistent. Here's this week's half hour mix (actually thirty eight minutes) of Liz Fraser's voice, variously with Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, Ian McCulloch, Massive Attack, Harold Budd and Felt. 

Half An Hour Of Liz Fraser

• Cocteau Twins: Pearly Dewdrops' Drop
• Cocteau Twins: The Spangle Maker
• Ian McCulloch: Candleland
• Massive Attack: Teardrop (Mad Professor Mazaruni Vocal Remix)
• This Mortal Coil: Song To The Siren
• This Mortal Coil: Edit To The Siren (In The Valley Re- edit)
• Cocteau Twins: Cherry- coloured Funk
• Felt: Primitive Painters
• Harold Budd, Simon Raymonde, Robin Guthrie, Liz Fraser: Ooze Out And Away, Onehow

Thirty Seven Minutes Of Massive Attack

This week's Sunday half hour mix comes from Bristol courtesy of Massive Attack. It's difficult now to remember exactly the impact Massive Attack had back in 1991 when Blue Lines was released, instantly switching on the heads of people to the reggae/ dub/ hip hop (soon to be trip hop) sound. Ravers, house heads, indie kids, almost everyone, was suddenly listening to something else. They went on to make some stunning songs and records after that but maybe with slightly less of 'the shock of the new' that they had in spring '91 (a time when they also dropped the word Attack from their name due to the bombing of Iraq by the US led coalition). Protection and Mezzanine both had outstanding songs and moments (plus the various remixes and versions, not least Mad Professor's dub of the whole Protection album). After that my interest came and went and I've dipped in and out (dipping back in for the remixes from Heligoland and 2016's Ritual Spirit EP. 

The thirty seven minute mix below tries to avoid the obvious mixes even if it goes for some of the big hitter songs and has a dub vein running through it, ideal for making your Sunday breakfast too. I realised putting it together that it could be three times the length without any drop off in terms of quality. It takes in vocals from Horace Andy, Tracey Thorn, Liz Fraser and Hope Sandoval, remixes by Brian Eno, Mad Professor, Larry Heard and Gui Boratto and has the combined talents of Smith And Mighty, Johnny Dollar and Nellee Hooper at the producer's desk. 

Thirty Seven Minutes Of Massive Attack

• Hymn Of The Big Wheel (Nellee Hooper Mix)
• Protection (The Eno Mix)
• Safe From Harm (Instrumental Original Mix)
• Teardrop (Mad Professor Mazaruni Mix)
• Any Love (Larry Heard Remix)
• Paradise Circus (Gui Boratto Remix)

Swim To Me

The days are very strange at the moment. Wake up early, everything crashes back in a millisecond later. The anxious knot reappears in the stomach, the tightness in the chest. The realisation that emotional pain can be so physical, so bodily present. Lie in bed for ages because it seems better than facing the day. Then the morning disappears, you shake yourself into doing something and then suddenly it's going dark. Evening stretches out and it's bedtime. Repeat.

The funeral was attended by huge numbers of people, the wake too, and we gave him the send off he deserved. It was all consuming but now it's done- the planning, organisation and the detail and the tenseness of waiting for it- we're left the dealing with the absence of him. And Christmas less than a week away. I've only just really twigged that it's December. Time seemed to pause on the last day of November and now someone's unclicked the pause button and it's the 20th December. 

My unplanned Elizabeth Fraser vocal trip took me down to the inevitable end of that road yesterday when I played Song To The Siren, a three minute and thirty second wave of sadness and loss. 

Song To The Siren

This re- edited version by In The Valley is depending on your point of view either a crime or a beautifully Balearic, slightly dubby re- imagining of This Mortal Coil's cover of Tim Buckley's song. I'm going with the latter. 

Edit To The Siren

Teardrop Trouble

I'm a bit raw at the moment so I'm just going to stick to some music until I get my thoughts together. Thank you to everyone who sent messages ahead of the funeral on Friday, to those of you who wrote posts and to JC (The Vinyl Villain) who came from Glasgow to South Manchester, in his words, to represent the blogging community. 

This Norman Cook remix of Trouble Understanding is a very nicely understated thing indeed, from a man who isn't necessarily always known for restraint or understatement. There's a Massive Attack Teardrop sample in there too. A gorgeous five minutes of sun coming up Balearic/ indie- gospel. 

Trouble Understanding (Norman Cook Remix/ Rudeboy Edit)

This is Massive Attack's Teardrop dubbed out by Mad Professor and Elizabeth Fraser making another appearance on these pages after the Ian McCulloch song a few days ago. . 

Teardrop (Mad Professor Mazaruni Vocal Mix)

Candleland

I found some refuge in Ian McCulloch's album Candleland yesterday. I'm not sure why. It just suggested itself to me. When Ian recorded and released it in 1989 he was coming at it from going through the twin losses of his father and Bunnymen drummer Pete de Freitas. I've been listening to Treasure by The Cocteau Twins the day before so maybe the Elizabeth Fraser connection prompted me to dig it out (she sings on the title track). Ian McCulloch solo albums may not carry a huge amount of significance or currency at the tail end of 2021 but this song carried me through for a few minutes yesterday.

Candleland

This version from a session for John Peel is a less smoothed out, rawer take on the song with Ian singing on his own and lots of natural echo on the guitars and voice. The session went out at the end of September 1989 and was recorded with Ian's new live band, The Prodigal Sons (who included Edgar Summertyme on bass and the legendary Mike Mooney on guitar). 

Candleland (Peel Session)