A Thousand Threads

I recently read Neneh Cherry's autobiography A Thousand Threads. It's a reflective and honest look at her extraordinary, bohemian life, a life with moments and people that leave you feeling she was near the centre of almost everything that was interesting. Her childhood was unconventional and filled with experiences. Her mother Moki, a Swedish artist and 60s beatnik met Ahmadu Jah in Stockholm. He was a student on a scholarship, one of six men who left from Sierra Leone to study engineering. They moved in together and Moki got pregnant. Not long after, when she was five months pregnant, Moki found out that Ahmadu and monogamy were incompatible. Neneh was born in 1964. The year before Moki had met musician Don Cherry. When Ahmadu moves on, amicably, Moki and Don get together at a jazz gig in Stockholm and become a couple. Neneh is from thereon the child of three parents. 

Moki and Don spend Neneh's childhood shuttling between a life in idyllic Sweden, the family living in a converted school house that Moki has made the centre of her world, one where art and family life are one and the same, a home and performance space, and life in 70s New York. Don is a heroin addict and when in New York he often disappears for a couple of days to 'take care of some business'. The family accept Don's addiction and work with him and it but the terror of Don not coming home or dying in their flat creates a lifetime of issues for everyone. 

As well as Sweden and new York the family move to London. Neneh is transformed by punk, meets and befriends Ari Up, joins The Slits, starts a relationship with Bruce Smith (drummer in The Pop Group and later The Slits and New Age Steppers), has a child (at 16!), splits up with Bruce, meets Cameron McVeigh (producer of Massive Attack), makes her solo album, appears on Top Of the Pops eight months pregnant... its a whirl of art and culture and life, Neneh constantly inspired and inspiring. 

She's honest too- she admits that the moving around of her childhood was something she continued into her adult life and that maybe her own children might have benefited from a more stable home life. She l about her spiraling alcohol issues that follow Moki's death and the long periods where she writes and releases nothing, totally consumed by being a mother. 

One of the most affecting chapters describes her first visit to Sierra Leone. She arrives in full punk clobber, army boots and trousers, a Clash t- shirt and leather jacket, and as she is taken in by her African relatives she discovers and embraces that side of her family. When she returns to the UK and appears in the Earthbeat video (from The Slits second album) she is wearing the African clothing she brought back with her. 

Writing the book as a grandparent, she is clearly still getting her head round some of it. She is as proud of her achievements as a women and a mother as her ones as a musician. Race and sex are never far from the story. Her upbringing in Sweden as the only mixed race kid in the school. Her fusion of punk, hip hop and street soul into Buffalo Stance. Her adventures as a teen in New York's early 80s downtown clubland. Her first transatlantic flight as a five year old (flying solo, aged five). A trip to Japan as part of Ray Petri's Buffalo posse with The Face. An international smash hit single in the 90s with Youssou N'Dour.  It's all there and more. She's funny, wise and insightful, unapologetic in some ways but clear minded too and has lived a life. 

Some music...

Buffalo Stance is one of the late 80s best pop singles, a streetwise and sassy piece of pop- hip hop scratching and house grooves with Bomb The Bass' Tim Simenon producing (it was worked up from a B-side for a Stock Aitken and Waterman single Looking Good Diving that husband Cameron McVey and Jamie Murphy had recorded). Buffalo was Ray Petri's outfit, a bunch of artists, models, musicians and stylists who enjoyed a burst of fame in mid- to- late London. A Buffalo Stance is an attitude, a mode of survival in urban life- 'We always hang in a buffalo stance/  We do the dive every time we dance'.

Buffalo Stance

Woman came out nearly a decade later, a riposte to James Brown's It's A Man's Man's World and song about female empowerment. Dramatic strings that echo James Brown's, trip hop beats and written at a  time when fame was on the verge of destabilising her completely. 

Woman

Blank Project came out in 2014, an album produced by Keiran Four Tet Hebden. Sparse, minimal, electronics via jazz and soul. Uncompromising. I loved it back in 2014 and haven't listened to it for ages- it still sounds like a powerful piece of music.  

Blank Project

An Hour Of 2025 Part Three

This is my third and final Sunday mix pulling together some of my favorite tracks from 2025 (the first one, ambient and instrumental, is here and the second, dub and dance, is here). This one starts out folky, strays from dub to cosmische and Balearic, and picks from the past too with two covers, some Stone Roses inspiration and Mazzy Star, songs borrowing from the years 1971, 1989, 1993 and 1999. Going back to go forwards. 

An Hour Of 2025 Part Three

• Joao Leao: One Of These Things First
• Sydney Minsky Sargeant: Summer Song
• Coyote: Battle Weary
• Stereolab: Flashes From Everywhere
• Psychederek: Thinkin' Bout U Pt. 4 (Jupiter/ Reprise)
• Saint Etienne: Alone Together (Hove Lawns Sunset Mix)
• Pale Blue Eyes: How Long Is Now (Richard Norris Remix)
• Red Snapper: Ban- Di- To
• Five Green Moons and Brix Smith: Boudica
• Raz and Afla: Windowlicker
• 10:40 Present Retro Fit: Lavender Mist
• Four Tet: Into Dust (Still Falling)

Joao Leao is a Brazillian- Canadian artist. This cover of a Nick Drake song came out on 7" in February on Toronto label Local Dish, a lovely, slightly tropical and ever so sweetly melancholic version of the original. 

Sydney Minsky Sargeant's solo album Lunga was a 2025 highlight, an album with some songs that date back to his teenage years growing up in Todmorden and the flipside to Syd's main job as leader of Working Men's Club. Lunga is downtempo, personal, acoustic guitar based with echoes of Syd Barrett in the singing and Nick Drake in the playing. Summer Song is reflective, a little lost, the sound of the end of summer. 

Notts Balearic veterans Coyote continue to drip feed new songs and tracks. 2025 saw a six track mini- album, Wailing To The Yellow Dawn, a collaboration with Peaking Lights and two singles including the one here, the dubbed out sounds of Battle Weary with the vocal sample iterating, 'Sufferin' is a poor man's crime'.  

Stereolab returned after a long gap with a new album, Instant Holograms On Metal Film, an album stuffed full of vintage synths, motorik rhythms, wit, invention and (crucially) good songs. Flashes From Everywhere starts out like an easy listening track and then goes krauty and flirts with being poppy. 

Stretford's Psychederek released the four track EP Thinkin' Bout U in August, four different versions of the song, covering everything from Pacific State style dance to broken down, beach bar Balearica (Pt. 4, the one I've included here), kind of proving there's no such thing as a definitive or final version. You can always find another way to do something. 

Saint Etienne released four versions/ remixes of Along Together (a track from 2024's The Night). The Hove Lawns Sunset mix re- imagines West Sussex as a Mediterranean island, slo mo beats and sunset by the pool vibes. Bob, Pete and Sarah then announced an album that would be their last and a tour this year that will be ditto. I think we'll miss them when they're gone.

Pale Blue Eyes are from Sheffield, an indie/ krauty trio. Richard remixed the song as a cosmische autobahn trip, soaring away from South Yorkshire and into 70s West Germany.

Red Snapper were all over my 2025. A tour in March to celerbate the 30th anniversary of Reeled And Skinned, a new album Barb And Feather, and an appearance on Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 with the percussion mayhem of Qraqeb. Ban- Di- To is amped up jump blues done 2025 style. 

Five Green Moons second album, Moon 2, was a second strong dub/ folk set from Justin Robertson, who is really in a purple patch at the moment. Brix Smith appears on Boudica. Surviving The Fall/ leading an uprising against the Romans- similarly troublesome I'd imagine. 

Raz and Afla released their cover of Aphex Town's Windowlicker, an Afro- futurist dancefloor bomb that repositions Aphex Twin somewhere new. 

Jesse Fahnestock's 10:40 released An Alternative History back in April, a track Jesse made inspired by a post here at Bagging Area where I imagined an alternate history of The Stone Roses, one where they didn't mess it up after June 1990 but kept going and recorded singles, EPs and albums all the way through the 90s culminating in a gig at Raglan Road scout hut in Sale, up the road from me, where Ian and John first rehearsed way back. You can read that post here. Jesse fired up his studio, sampled Ian and built a new/ imaginary Roses track. The third version, Lavender Mist, went all backwards and is named after Jackson Pollock's painting of the same name. For a while Jesse had the idea that I might provide the vocal but I bottled it. Probably for the best. My singing voice hasn't been the same since I gave up smoking. I always planned to include Lavender Mist on an end of year mix but Mani's death in November added an extra poignancy to everything Roses related. You may have seen the photos from the funeral of his former bandmates carrying his coffin out of Manchester cathedral. A very sad loss. 

Four Tet's Mazzy Star sampling Into Dust (Still Falling) was my favourite single of 2025, a lush and slinky tune that (as I said elsewhere) sounded like summer in the summer and sounds like winter in the here and now. Kieran Hebden can do little wrong for me- his album with William Tyler was as good an album as any other released in 2025 and as Four Tet has been on a roll of superb albums in the last decade with New Energy in 2017, Sixteen Oceans in 2020 and Three in 2024.  

Bagging Area End of Year List 2025

Today marks the fifteenth Bagging Area end of year list- let's get the album above out of the way first. Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2, put together by myself, Martin, Dan, Baz and Mark with sleeve art by Rusty and released on Golden Lion Sounds, came out in the summer. It opens with a previously unreleased Sabres Of Paradise track, the full length, thirteen minute techno skank of Lik Wid Nit Wit, and then goes on to showcase brand new tracks by Dicky Continental, Unit 14, Richard Fearless, A Certain Ratio and Number, Red Snapper, Richard Norris, David Harrow, Bedford Falls Players and a cover of Two Lone Swordsmen's Sick When We Kiss by Sleaford Mods. 

Piccadilly Records put it at number 12 in their Top 30 Collections in their end of year booklet (sandwiched between Pink Floyd and The Fall). If you take out the re- issues and just include the compilations, we came in third. Phonica, a very fine record shop in Soho, put it at number five in their compilations chart. It still makes me shake my head in disbelief sometimes that we have accomplished it- the quality of the music is so high, everyone involved is at their very best. 

The entire enterprise is a tribute to Andrew Weatherall, his music, life and work, and given that Andrew's standards were so high, it's no surprise that the people he worked with and who are inspired by him- like the artists on Volume 2 (and Volume 1)- are all also people who produce and create such good music. There are a handful of copies in some record shops- Piccadilly, Stranger Than Paradise, Phonica- and there might still be a few at Golden Lion Sounds but it's close to selling out its entire run of 1500 copies and once they're gone, they're gone. 

Another compilation album I've enjoyed this year is Sean Johnston's A Love From Outer Space, a celebration of the travelling cosmic disco started by Sean and Andrew Weatherall in 2010 and still going boldly to this day. The album starts with a Neville Watson dub of The Blow Monkeys and takes in Phil Kieran (remixed by Andrew), Laars, Secret Circuit, Duncan Gray, Das Komplex, Brioski and many more. Cosmic chug, never knowingly exceeding 113 bpm. 

The third compilation album that has rocked 2025 is Ein Null: 10 Years Of Sprechen, a ten track round up of the Manchester label's artists with new tracks from A Certain Ratio, Psychederek, The Thief Of Time, The Utopia Strong and more. 

The best new old music of 2025 includes Husker Du's The Miracle Year: 1985, a huge live album showing Husker Du at their mid- 80s peak, on fire. I loved R.E.M.'s re- released Radio Free Europe EP which included the semi- legendary Mitch Easter Dub Mix. The Richard Sen remixes of John Grant, sitting unreleased since 2017, finally saw the light of day. My year started with Bob Dylan and the film A Complete Unknown and I've been dipping in and out of Dylan all year as a result. I haven't committed to the latest edition of The Bootleg Series, Volume 18, but have played his 1962 song Rocks And Gravel repeatedly (unreleased in 1962 and part of this year's Bootleg Series Through The Open Window, 1953- 1962). The Return Of The Durutti Column, a comprehensive and remastered re- issue of the 1980 Durutti Column debut is stunning too. Aphex Twin's continued visits into his vaults saw him put Zahl am1 live track 1 up on Soundcloud, a typically brilliant AFX track. Volcanic Tongue, a compilation of obscure, outsider bands from David Keenan's label of the same name was a winner too, with 20 slices of eclectic, underground music dating from 1968 to 2013. 

Albums of 2025

All of these abums have been somewhere near my various listening devices this year and all are albums I'll come back to again- Reverb Delay's The Ghosts Of Dawn, David Harrow's Accelerated Life, a pair of albums from 100 Poems, Rodeo Disco and Let The Horse Run Free, Evan Dando's Love Chant, Sonar// Radar's Weak Sun, Sonnenspot's Sonnenspot, SubDan's Innerleben, Anywhere by Causeway, Red Snapper's Barb And Feather, Decius Vol. II (Splendour & Obedience), Daniel Avery's Tremor, Five Green Moons' very recently released and probably should be in my top ten Moon 2, Rose City Band's Sol y Sombra, Dub Syndicate's Obscured By Version, The Orb's Buddhist Hipsters, Faded by The Liminanas, the vinyl releases of Thought Leadership's Ill Of Pentacles and Ace Of Swords albums, Coyote's Wailing To The Yellow Dawn, Half Man Half Biscuit's All Asimov And No Fresh Air, Jezebell's Jezebellearic Beats Volume 2, KiF's Still Out, Warrington- Runcorn New Town Development Plan's Public Works And Utilities, Tortoise's Touch, Pye Corner Audio's Where Things Are Hollow and Stereolab's marvelous comeback Instant Holograms On Metal Film.

10 Death In Vegas: Death Mask

Four sides of emotional and purist machine techno from Richard Fearless- side four in particular with Your Love and the title track is an immersive, psychedelic techno trip. 

9 Dean Wareham: That's The Price Of Loving Me

On the former Galaxie 500 songwriter, singer and guitarist's fourth solo album, he got back with producer Kramer and they caught Dean at his best- reverb drenched guitars, a dreamy production and a set of reflective, witty and wise songs. Understated but I kept coming back to it. 

8 Mogwai: The Bad Fire

Released at the start of the year, Mogwai are always an essential listen and this album is as good as any they've made- walls of guitars, huge melodies, songs that scrape away and soar. Some members of the band were going through tough times when it was recorded and you can hear the catharsis in the grooves of the album. Fanzine Made Of Flesh may be song title of the year too (although Half Man Half Biscuit's Horror Clowns Are Dickheads runs it close). 

7 Syd Minsky Sargeant: Lunga

Syd's solo album, a switch from the tough, electronic beats and rhythms of Working Men's Club, is a folky, downbeat treasure trove of song, with Nick Drake and Syd Barrett both sounding like they're there inside the songs. Try Long Roads for a taster of Lunga's delights...

6 Adrian Sherwood: The Collapse Of Everything

Adrian Sherwood doesn't release many albums under his own name and on the basis of The Collapse Of Everything he should do it more often. Dub is the foundation (as ever) but The Collapse Of Everything rolls and tumbles between all kinds of sounds and genres, a free flow of sound and texture with a supporting cast including Brian Eno, Keith Le Blanc and Doug Wimbish, and mostly sounds cinematic, like it's the soundtrack to something. An On U Soundtrack. 

5 Escape- Ism: Charge Of The Love Brigade

Ian Svenonius and Sandi Denton's fourth album is short and sweet, just ten songs and just a little over thirty minutes long but it's been near my turntable since its release in March. Minimal sounds, fuzz guitar, vintage synth drones and hissy drum machine, lyrics pared back to key ideas and delivered with drop dead insouciance- on Last Of The Sellouts Ian is both tongue in cheek and deadly serious. One Of The Greats performs the same dead pan trick. On Fire In Malibu he sounds like he's been tipped over the edge. For a while I thought this might be my favourite album of 2025. 

4 Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe: Liminal

The third of a trilogy recorded by Eno and Wolfe, Liminal is a joy, Liminal is an album that melds songs with ambience and comes up with something very beautiful- the soundtrack to a dream, a simple sounding but very deep record. 

3 Sewell And The Gong: The Patron Saint Of Elsewhere

I've listened to Sewell And The Gong as much as any other artist this year and the album, Patron Saint Of Elsewhere, could easily have topped this list. Seven tracks with pastoral roots, folk melodies and motorik rhythms, bridging the space between the bucolic and the cosmic. Sumptuous and wondrous and a little frayed at the edges.

2 Kieran Hebden and William Tyler: 41 Longfield Street Late 80s

41 Longfield Street Late 80s is a wonderful record- William Tyler's guitar playing and Kieran Hebden's ambient laptop production complementing each other and bouncing off each other, from the extended free form cover version of Lyle Lovett's If I Had A Boat, to the more Four Tet sounds of Spider Ballad through to the album's closer, the intense distortion and acoustic guitars of Secret City, it never lets up and keeps giving.

1 Andy Bell: Pinball Wanderer

Andy Bell bounces around from Ride to GLOK to his solo records, finding time to record with a slew of other artists, and spent much of 2025 on the road with Oasis. In February he released Pinball Wanderer, the title a nod to his musical ricochets, an eight song album that he completed under the influence of extreme jet lag. Dot Allison and Michael Rother appear on his cover of The Passions' I'm In Love With A German Film Star. On Apple Green UFO he channels The Stone Roses, a song they should have written after they made Something's Burning and elsewhere he travels cosmische. His guitar playing is lighter than air, krauty and glistening, and on the title track he transports the spirit of Bert Jansch and Pentangle from the late 60s to 2025, folk melodies married with 21st century psychedelia and shuffly drums. 

Pinball Wanderer

Singles/ Tracks/EPs of 2025

I've tried to not just repeat tracks from the albums in the list above in order to make this list a standalone one. All of these singles/ EPs/ one off releases were of note in 2025...

Hugo Nicolson's Black Stick, M- Paths' Emotivated, Matt Gunn's Nowhere, Dirt Bogarde's Pihkel, a clutch of Richard Norris releases including his remix of Pale Blue Eyes' How Long Is Now and his remix of Wildflower by Gulp, Puerto Montt City Orchestra's And We'd Be So Happy, Florecer's Breathy Drops, Statues' The Pilina Experiment, several Pye Corner Audio tracks including Galaxies and the Matrix EP and Saint Etienne's Glad. 

And here's 25 for 25...

25 Factory Floor: Between You

24 The Moonlandingz ft. Iggy Pop: It's Where I'm From

23 Andy Bell ft. Dot Allison and Michael Rother: I'm In Love... (Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s Remix and Dub)

22 10:40: An Alternative History

21 Joao Leao: One Of These Things First

20 Raz and Alfa: Windowlicker

19 Rude Audio: Strange Phenomena EP

18 Factory Floor: Tell Me 

17 Psychederek: Thinkin' Bout U

16 Pandit Pam Pam: The Senator

15  Le Carousel: We're All Gonna Hurt

14 Saint Etienne: Alone Together Remix EP

13/ 12 Various remixes of The Cure's Songs For A Lost World but especially the Four Tet remix of Alone and the Orbital remix of Endsong

11 Daniel Avery ft. Cecile Believe: Rapture In Blue (Midnight Version)

10 Coyote: Battle Weary

9 Adrian Sherwood: The Grand Designer EP

8 Coyote and Peaking Lights: Love Letters/ So Far Away

7 Deeply Armed: The Healing (plus the remixes by Keith Tenniswood and Richard Fearless) 

6 Sewell And The Gong: Quiet Storm Remixes (Ruf Dug, Chris Coco)

5 Alex Kassian x Spooky: Orange Coloured Liquid

4 Black Bones: Album Sampler (this release is some kind of blending of an EP, an album, a compilation of 12" singles- whatever it is it's fantastic)

3 Klangkollektor: Dubtapes Volume Two

2 The Light Brigade: Shuffle The Deck

1 Four Tet: Into Dust (Still Falling)

Sheer joy from Four Tet, sampling/ reworking a Mazzy Star song. It was released in June and it lit up summer. It's still doing it in the depths of winter, Hope Sandoval's voice spinning against Kieran Hebden's skippy rhythms- emotive, trippy, endlessly rewarding. If you buy it on 12" there's a stripped down, subtler version of the B-side which hits a slightly different spot.  

I've probably missed something and there will inevitably be a record, track or album I pick up on in early 2026 which should be part of one of these lists. The nature of lists is that they're incomplete. Hopefully 2026 will continue to throw up more great music and more pop culture for us to listen to, dance to, obsess over and dissect. And maybe there will be a Sounds From the Flightpath Estate Volume 3...

Twenty One Minutes Of Two Minute Tracks

I had an idea that I would do a Sunday mix of all those short electronic/ ambient tracks that appear on albums, the intros and outros, the bridging tracks, found sounds, brief ambient pieces and short one minute ideas that never got worked up into a full track but that the artist clearly liked. I realised that to make it forty minutes long would require at least twenty tracks and time constraints this week meant that I started the mix but haven't got anywhere near forty minutes- it's just shy of twenty one minutes, fourteen tracks from a variety of sources. I need to give it more thought really and gather together some more and either do a part two or expand this one out but in the meantime, here it is...

Twenty One Minutes Of Two Minute Tracks

I decided early on that two minutes was the cut off (although there are a couple here which just tip over that time). I was going to go totally beatless but that didn't work out. It's almost completely without vocals too. I wasn't sure it all worked but playing it back last night I was pretty happy with it. An expanded edition/ part two is definitely on the cards. 

• A Man Called Adam: Easter Song (Gospel Oak FX)
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Tiny Reminder No. 1
• Four Tet: This Is For You
• Sewell And The Gong: MYND
• The Orb: Snowbow
• Ultramarine: A Year From Monday
• A Man Called Adam: Easter Song (Hi- Tech)
• M- Paths: Calm
• Polypores: Mystery Energy Score
• Aphex Twin: Avril 14th (reversed music not audio)
• Pandit Pam Pam: Interludio
• Daniel Avery: First Light
• Sydney Minsky Sargeant: Intro
• Andrew Weatherall: Intro

A Man Called Adam's Easter Song is one of their best, a triumphant piece of optimsitc, life affirming Balearica. In 2017 the duo put out a special edition on Bandcamp to celebrate the song's 20th birthday which came with two new very short versions, the found sound intro of Gospel Oak FX and the ambient with beats of Hi- Tech. Both appear on this mix. 

In 2000 Two Lone Swordsmen released their electronic triple disc opus Tiny Reminders, Weatherall and Tenniswood's pursuit of  techno/ bass purism followed through to its end. Each of the three disc opened with a burst of static/ quiet noise called Tiny Reminder and numbered 1, 2 and 3. 

Four Tet's Sixteen Ocean's was a 2020 highlight, three sides of vinyl that soundtracked those early days of lockdown in March/ April 2020 of that year. This Is For You is one of five short tracks on it- the others are Hi Hello, ISTM, 1993 Band Practice and Bubbles At Overlook 25th March 2019- any/ all of which I was going to include here and didn't.

Sewell And The Gong's Patron Saint Of Elswhere is one of my favourite albums of 2025, a Balearic  folk/ motorik beauty with MYND a short one minute fourteen seconds of sound sandwiched between much longer excursions. 

The Orb tend to do long tracks. Snowbow is from 2005's Okie Dokie It's The Orb On Kompakt, an album I only found recently and have been enjoying. Snowbow is the closing track, two minutes and fourteen seconds.

A Year From Monday gave me the idea for this mix. It's on an album of Ultramarine recordings from 1997/ 8 that sat unreleased until this year. I posted it a few Monday's ago and listening to it in the car I wondered how it would work with a load of other very short tracks around it. 

M- Paths' Calm was on their album Hope, released on Mighty Force in 2023, a rippling melody line and drums. 

Polypores released an album in June, Cosmically A Shambles. I posted a song from it on Friday. The slightly hyperactive and bleepy Mystery Energy Score is in the middle of the album and this mix. I couldn't decide if its energy was a good change of pace or not and nearly took it out. In the end I thought it just about worked.

Aphex Twin's Avril 14th is his most streamed track, a Satie like piano piece smothered in reverb. THis version, the music reversed not audio version, is from user18081971's Soundcloud page, widely acknowledged to be Richard D James' outlet for all manner of unreleased music. 

Pandit Pam Pam is from Sao Paulo, Brazil. Interludio is from Dot, an EP from January this year, six tracks recorded while caring for a young baby, Diogo. 

First Light is the opening track on Daniel Avery's Song For Alpha, a 2018 album that was the start of a run of outstanding albums that isn't over yet. One minute and forty seconds of wodnerful ambient drones. 

Sydney Minsky Sargeant's album Lunga came out last week, an autumn 2025 highlight. Intro is the opening track (obviously), a short ambient piece that eases us into Lunga. And out of this mix.

Andrew Weatherall's Intro was the very short first track on Convenanza. 'I seem to have got in with the wrong crowd', the voice says, setting Andrew's stall out. 

Forty Minutes Of Folkishness

Today's Sunday mix is an inspired by or 'ish' mix, forty minutes of music that is folk adjacent or inspired- the melodies, the playing, a cover of a late 60s, English folk rock classic, an edit of a 60s folk song, some other songs that just feel like they're in the folk music vernacular. Most of the songs on the mix are from this year, the rest from fairly recently.  For want of a better phrase, they've all got a folk vibe. 

There's plenty more music sitting in my downloads and music folders that fall within the boundaries of this- Richard Norris and Dot Allison both come to mind so a part two may follow.

Forty Minutes Of Folkishness

• Luke Schneider: midafternoon classic
• Matt Deighton: Tannis Root
• Coyote: The Outsider
• Andy Bell: Pinball Wanderer
• Andy Bell: Light Flight
• Sydney Minski Sargeant: Long Roads
• Totem Edits 12: Feel
• Sewell And The Gong: Passing Oort Clouds
• Four Tet: Into Dust (Still Falling)

Luke Schneider is from Nashville, a pedal steel guitarist and part of the ambient Americana scene. midafternoon classic came out last year, a couple of minutes of ambient/ folk with nylon strings, pedal steel and harmonica. His latest four track release came out two days ago and can be found here. 

Matt Deighton's Villager is a 1995 folk gem, much overlooked at the time. Tannis Root is a few minutes of acoustic guitar and some woodwind, lovely modern instrumental folk inspired music that came out on Moonboot's Moments In Time compilation. 

Coyote's The Outsider was the closing song on their 2021 album The Mystery Light, an acoustic guitar sequence and the vice of mystic/ writer/ speaker/ philosopher Alan Watts. The Coyote duo were nodding their heads at Andrew Weatherall too, who wrote under the pseudonym The Outsider in the Boy's Own fanzine and who was exactly what Watts is talking about, 'you don't have to join, you don't have to play the game...'

Andy Bell's Pinball Wanderer came out at the start of this year. The title track is lit up by a late 60s folk rock guitar melody, some shuffly acoustic guitars and a sense that Fairport Convention and The Stone Roses in 1989 got in a room together. On his 2022 covers EP Untitled Film Stills, Andy covered songs by Yoko Ono, The Kinks, Arthur Russell and Pentangle. Light Flight was from Pentangle's 1969 folk- rock album Basket Of Light, an album that pushed them into the charts. Light Flight was also the theme tune to BBC 1's Take Three Girls, a late 60s/ early 70s drama about three young women sharing a flat in London. 

I wrote about Sydney Minski Sargeant's forthcoming solo album Lunga last week. The single Long Roads is folk indebted, echoes of Nick Drake and Syd Barrett in the playing and singing. Lunga promises to be one of autumn's highlights. 

Totem Edit is Leo Elstob and Justin Deighton. On Feel they take Gordon Lightfoot's 1967 song The Way I Feel and turn it into a 2025 folk/ Balearic groove. I've played this out and it always gets a response. 

Sewell And The Gong's recent album Patron Saint Of Elsewhere is one of late summer 2025's best, a lovely fusion of folk, drones, pastoral melodies, motorik drums and samples. Previously, in 2023, Sewell released a four track EP called Tonight We Fly and Passing Oort Clouds is a beautiful, folk inspired instrumental, looped melodies, acoustic guitars and a gently prodding rhythm. Oort clouds are (possibly) a giant spherical shell surrounding the sun, the stars and the Kuiper Belt, a bubble made of icy comet like objects. 

Four Tet's Into Dust (Still Falling) came out earlier this summer and has been getting regular plays round here ever since, the Mazzy Star sample and vocal sinking into Four Tet's folky melodies and skippy drum track, Hope Sandoval's melancholy playing off against Keiran Hebden's propulsion.

An Hour Of Sunshine From Glasgow And Two Hours Of Do!! You!! From Richard Sen

John Fenner of Glasgow did this mix recently and shared it, Cafe Del Muir, an hour and seven minutes of sunshine for a rainy day in Glasgow (or anywhere). It's a blend of old and new and some of the tunes John selected came via recommendations from this blog- it's nice to see the ripples that go out and come back. There's a couple that are new to me as well and so the ripples go back out again. You can find Cafe Dal Muir at Soundcloud. 

• The Chemical Brothers: One Too Many Mornings
• Four Tet: Loved
• Saint Etienne: Alone Together (Hove Lawns Sunset Mix)
• The Cure: Pictures Of You (Extended Dub Mix)
• The Vendetta Suite: Warehouse Rock (Timmy Stewart's Six Minutes To Sunrise Mix)
• Sinead O'Connor: You Made Me The Thief Of Your Heart
• The Main Stem: Since You Left (Prins Thomas Miks)
• 10:40: Kissed Again
• Bal5000: Bleu Infini
• The Blow Monkeys: Save Me (Neville Watson Dub)
• The Light Brigade: Only Love Can Save Us
• Orbital: Belfast (ANNA Ambient Mix)

On Friday Richard Sen hosted his weekly Do!! You!! radio show, two hours of top tunes from a man who knows his musical onions. Richard played three tracks from our forthcoming Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 album (and ave us a shout out) so if you're itching to hear three of the tracks from it- the unreleased version of Lik Wid Nit Wit by Sabres Of Paradise, Red Snapper's Qraqeb and Sleaford Mods cover of Two Lone Swordsmen's Sick When We Kiss (retitled as sick wen we x) then this is the place to do it until the vinyl copies start arriving on doormats and in porches. As well as those three Richard plays tons of other great tracks, including some classic trance, breakbeat, and some very deep cosmic disco. Listen here. 

A Midsummer Mix: Forty Minutes Of 2025 So Far

There's some big news coming tomorrow which some of you will want to act on- if you were one of the people that bought a certain compilation album last year, you might want to be back here bright and breezy on Monday morning. Full details to come in twenty four hours time. 

It's the end of June tomorrow also, halfway through the year- I've no idea how the last six months have gone so quickly- but it seems like a good point to do a 2025 So Far Sunday Mix, not a definitive Best Of 2025, rather some of the tracks and songs I've enjoyed the most so far this year. 

A Midsummer Mix: Forty Minutes Of 2025 So Far

• Death In Vegas: Chingola
• Andy Bell: Pinball Wanderer
• Adrian Sherwood: Cold War Skank
• Demise Of Love: Carry The Blame
• 10:40 presents Retro Fit: An Alternative History (Lavender Mist)
• Escape- Ism: Last Of The Sell Outs
• Klangkollektor: Isle Of Stonsey
• Four Tet: Into Dust (Still Falling)

Chigola is a five minute ambient techno intro to the latest Death In Vegas album Death Mask, an album which does not hold its techno punches and which is a machine music tour de force. Richard Fearless poured a lot into the making of Death Mask, some personal losses reflected and worked through. It's an overloaded and emotional trip. Chingola is few minutes of scene setting, calm before the storm. 

Andy Bell's latest solo album Pinball Wanderer came out in February led by a cover of The Passions' I'm In Love With A German Film Star with Dot Allison and Michael Rother on board. The album's title track is an instrumental delight, a circling guitar part beamed from late 60s folk into Andy's 2025 motorik/ cosmsiche/ electric shoegaze. 

Adrian Sherwood's four track dubplate 10" came out recently, led by title track The Grand Designer and has been on steady rotation round here ever since (though I missed out on the vinyl). Cold War Skank is a moody dub/ guitar workout.

Demise Of Love is a three man modern electronic meeting of Daniel Avery, Syd Minsky- Sergeant (Working Men's Club) and James Greenwood (Ghost Culture). They have, like Adrian Sherwood, released a four track 10" EP that merges acid house, some intense techno sounds, industrial noise and the flickers of what New Order could have been had they kept heading away from the light. 

An Alternative History was written as an imaginary Stone Roses song, based on a blogpost by some blogger or other that imagined a world where the band didn't blow it but kept their heads and kept making music, avoiding the pitfalls of The Second Coming. Jesse's new Roses song came in three versions. Lavender Mist is the backwards one. 

Escape- Ism is Ian Svenonius' latest revolutionary outfit, a duo aiming to rewrite modern culture/ indie- rock with stripped down, scuzzy guitar/ drum machine/ keys/ vocals. The album- Charge Of The Love Brigade- is one of my favorites so far this year, a thirty five minute manifesto. Last Of Sell Outs is the best song on it, a meditation on commerce, art and musical integrity and the price of selling out. 

Klangkollektor is Lars Fischer from Numremberg. The EP Dubplates Vol 2, out on Manchester's Jason Boardman's Before I Die label, is a chilled Balearic dub masterclass ending with Isle Of Stonsey with pedal steel/ Hawaiian guitar sailing out into the cosmos. 

Four Tet's latest single samples Mazzy Star to achingly beautiful effect, a Four Tet track that hits all the spots, capable of moving me to tears. 

Into Dust

The release of new music by Four Tet is often the cause of much rejoicing at Bagging Area and the new track this week hits all the spots. Into Dust (Still Falling) is classic Four Tet- summer sounding, skippy drums, folky instrumentation, understated but emotive synths and keys, fresh and now but with a foot planted somewhere in the past- a past where rave and folk met...

Into Dust (Still Falling) samples the voice of Hope Sandoval (there's the foot in the past) from a Mazzy Star song, a voice that is always a welcome sound. Recently my friend Spencer sent me a link to a Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions track from 2017, a nine minute drone called Into The Trees, Hope playing a 1960s organ, holding long keyboard chords down and singing softly over the top. Colm O'Ciosoig, the other member of the group, plays tumbling drums in the background. It's magical stuff. 

Into The Trees

Hope and Colm formed The Warm Inventions as a side project from their two main bands, Mazzy Star and My Bloody Valentine. I hadn't heard the album Into The Trees is from, Until The Hunter, eleven songs recorded partly in a pair of Martello Towers in Dublin, spaces filled with round walls, no edges and a natural reverb. 

In 2001 Hope and Colm released the first Warm Inventions album- Bavarian Fruit Bread, an album I do own. It's a quiet, hushed, folky, small hours album with some lovely songs. Like this one...

On The Low

... and this one, written before Hope formed Mazzy Star and with a Velvet Underground third album feel. 

Suzanne

Monday's Long Song

Kieran Hebden (otherwise known as Four Tet) and William Tyler (guitarist in among others Silver Jews and Lambchop as well as a solo artist) may not seem like obvious candidates for a collaborative album but they share a love of folk, various cosmic sounds and it turns out late 80s country. There's an album on the way in September called 41 Longfield Street Late 80s and ahead of it is this eleven minute beauty, If I Had A Boat...

If I Had A Boat sets out with a long gentle drone, which builds and shifts, some feedback and static drifting in, and then two minutes in, the faint sound of finger picking on a guitar- then, suddenly the guitar is at the foreground on its own. The synths and Kieran Hebden production parts drift back in as Tyler picks away, and gradually everything is balanced again. This is only six minutes in, there's still half the track to go and the second half is a delight, constantly evolving and revolving, melodies and synths, drones and squiggles, round and round.

If I Had A Boat is a cover of sorts- a long instrumental re- interpretation might be a better description- of a Lyle Lovett song from his 1988 album Pontiac. Lyle was in the news a lot in the late 80s, his idiosyncratic take on country garnering a lot of praise. He was also for a while in a relationship with Julia Roberts after they met making the 1992 film The Player and married in 1993 (divorcing two years later). 

Alone Again

Record Store/ Shop Day passed me by a bit this year- I didn't see anything in the pre- RSD lists that caught my eye, cash was tight, and I avoided going into town on the day itself. We flew to Marrakech the day after so I sidestepped it and as a result missed this, a one sided 12" single, a Four Tet remix of Alone.

Alone was the lead song from last years' Songs Of A Lost World, The Cure's return to the fray. I loved Alone and the rest of the album. I'm a big fan of Four Tet. This remix is both of them spliced together, the skippy Four Tet beats underpinned by Simon Gallop's bass, some lovely synth work and piano, and then eventually Robert's voice, 'this is the end of every song we sing'. 

There's going to be an entire album of remixes in June, Remixes Of A Lost World, with a fairly stellar list of remixers including versions from Four Tet (I'm assuming it'll a different one as this remix is supposed to be an RSD exclusive), Daniel Avery, Orbital, Danny Briotet and Rico Conning, Cosmodelica, Craven Faults, Mogwai, The Twilight Sad, and Trentemoller among others. 

Five Years

I'm not exactly sure what the point of this post is and have written, re- written and deleted parts of it several times and almost scrapped the entire thing but in the end I thought I should mark it. Five years ago this week Covid's arrival in the UK brought about the first lockdown and life changed dramatically for everyone. 

The Friday of this week in March, five years ago today, schools were closed and everyone was sent home. At that point I was an Assistant Head at the school I work at. I made the announcement in the assembly to our Year 11s that this was their last assembly and that they wouldn't be sitting their exams that summer (you might reasonably ask why the Headteacher didn't do that and therein lies a whole other story which is not for here or now). School was difficult all week with increasing numbers of staff and students off ill, the rest of the staff very stretched as absences left gaps and tensions were running high. Coughing became a classroom issue. Year 11 and 13 were particularly emotional as their school experience was came to an abrupt and unexpected stop. 

I started to write a post about our experience of lockdown, a reminiscence- lockdown nostalgia is a genuine thing (not for everyone I know)- but I didn't like the post and binned it. The impact of Covid has been huge and apart from a few pieces here and there in the media this week, for many people Covid is done, gone, over, to be forgotten, consigned to a weird period four to five years ago that they want to forget about and move on from. There was a lot of talk at the time about the new normal, about things being different when 'all this is over'. I don't see much of that.  

Our son Isaac died of Covid in November 2021, just as the world was opening up again. He was 23. He is one of 232, 112 people in the UK who died from Covid. His name is on the Covid memorial wall in London. It still staggers me sometimes that he is not just our personal loss and grief but that he's one small part of a national and global catastrophe. The memorial wall was on the news recently and there he is, one name among many. The news in January and February looked bad, cities in China in complete lockdown, Italian hospitals overrun and in chaos. We watched all of that and then all the fallout in this country with the nonsense and chaos of the Johnson government- and then Isaac died of that disease eighteen months after we went into lockdown. 

There are probably millions of people connected to the 232, 112 who died, millions of personal tragedies. There are also an estimated 1.9 million people with some form of long Covid, just under 3% of the UK's population. Many schools are still reeling form the fallout of lockdowns and the lost months, not just of learning but of socialisation and social skills and behaviour. It'll take another ten years for those young people to move through the education system. They've lost out in many ways and for those in already deprived communities the impact on their education and well- being will likely follow them long into adulthood. 

I'm not sure what we've learned from Covid. The Tories moved on as quickly as they could and the Labour government seem to want to treat the disabled as benefit scroungers and force them back to work. I don't see a new world being built from our experience of Covid and lockdown. Lockdowns built some bridges between people, community spirit in many places was stronger than before- street WhatsApp groups buzzed constantly- but they created differences and disagreement as well as people became judgemental of others who weren't following the rules correctly or of those deemed to be following them too closely. Into the void of human contact, division and conspiracy theories grew. Vaccination scepticism spread and undoubtedly caused deaths. When Isaac was on the Covid ward that he died on, the nurses told us almost everyone else on the ward was unvaccinated and that many would die due to their decision- and they, the nursing teams, had to deal with that daily. 

In some ways it feels five years ago, all of that. In some ways it feels very recent, very present. It's not something all of us can move on from. 

Lockdown saw the arrival of a few albums that arrived in the post, packages wiped down and isoalted for 24 hours before being opened, that sound tracked the evenings of those days in March in April when we all adjusted to living in lockdown. One of them was Four Tet's Sixteen Oceans, a record that if I reach for now instantly drops me back into the spring of 2020 and that sense of the unknown that the early weeks of the first lockdown brought. Four Tet's music on this album is so warm and enveloping, an aural balm, real mood enhancing music. This one closes the album in fine style. 

Mama Teaches Sanskrit

An Hour Of The Flightpath Estate AW61 Afternoon Set

This is my hour's set from last Saturday afternoon at AW61 at The Golden Lion, Todmorden, re- created at home. The photo above shows my view from the DJ booth as my set ended and the auction and raffle began- you may recognise some of the faces getting ready to bid on items from Andrew Weatherall's studio. 

Once we've got all the other sets and the evening's rotations recreated we can upload the entire thing but I thought I'd share mine in the meantime. It comes in at over an hour and I only played for an hour on the day- from memory, I mixed Biosphere's En- Trance out because the file seemed very quiet (even for an ambient track) and it is in the mix below too. I think I mixed out of Underworld's 8 Ball halfway through as well but just left it playing in full here because, really, what sort of person mixes out the second half of 8 Ball? I'd just faded the GLOK Starlight Dub of A Mountain Of One's Star in when Gig, the Golden Lion's legendary landlady, took the mic to start the auction (along with Lizzie and Sofia) so that track was left mostly unplayed- you'll have to imagine the auction and raffle taking place when you reach that point in my set (unless you were there in which case replay it in your mind). I played Emotionally Clear as the raffle ended and to provide my handover to Dan who was waiting in the wings. 

Adam's Flightpath Estate Afternoon Set At AW61

• Coyote: Western Revolution
• Durutti Column: Bordeaux Sequence
• Psychederek: Test Card Girl
• Four Tet: Loved
• Rick Cuevas: The Birds
• Biosphere: En- Trance
• Underworld: 8 Ball
• Wixel: Expressway To Yr Skull (Long Champs Bonus Beats)
• This Mortal Coil: Edit To The Siren
• Bjork: One Day
• James Holden: Common Land
• A Mountain Of One: Star (GLOK Starlight Dub)
• David Holmes and Raven Violet: Emotionally Clear

Western Revolution is Coyote's sublime edit of Gil Scott Heron's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. I had half a mind to start with Lonely, which is from the same vinyl only EP out last year, Magic Wand Special Edition Vol. 2, but Mr Holmes played it the night before. 

Bordeaux Sequence was on The Durutti Column's 1987 album The Guitar And Other Machines, a moment of genuine beauty from Vini Reilly. It is a re- recorded version of Bordeaux from 1983's Another Setting. A couple of people in the room gave me a 'thank you for playing Durutti Column' look.

Psychederek is from Stretford, just up the road from me. Test Card Girl was a digital only single from 2023 and I'm not over it yet

Loved was a single from Four Tet, also from last year and is now the opening track on his Three album. Another 2023 song that has stuck around well into '24. 

The Birds is by Rick Cuevas, from a self - released, private pressing album called Symbolism that came out in 1984, an album described on Discogs as 'soft rock/ AOR'. I wouldn't necessarily call The Birds either- a friend once described it as 'Durutti Column on steroids' which I'm happier with. I'm fairly certain I only know of this song because of Andrew Weatherall referencing it in an interview or playing it on a radio show. 

Biosphere's En- Trance is ambient/ techno from Belgium in 1994, an album called Patashnik. It's just some synth drones and an acoustic guitar- I say 'just', it's much more than that obviously. Shame this WAV file I have is so quiet. 

Underworld's 8 Ball was on the soundtrack to The Beach, the Leonardo Di Caprio film from 2000. 8 Ball is a nine minute low key epic with fluid guitar playing and some of Karl's loveliest singing, lyrics about men with empty whiskey bottles and walkie talkies and flaming 8 ball tattoos on their arms, a man who eventually throws his arms around him. They gave this away to a soundtrack, a soundtrack where it was overshadowed a little by All Saints and Moby- most bands would kill for a tune this good and would make it a single or the track they built an album around. Someone in the Lion asked me what this was and took some convincing it was Karl on vocals.

Wixel are from Belgium (with hindsight, there's a bit of a Belgian theme running through this mix) and put out a cover of Sonic Youth's Expressway To Yr Skull in 2008, part of a seven track EP of Sonic Youth covers. The Long Champs edit turns it into a shimmering, semi -ambient haze that led to a couple of enquiries in the pub- and if you turn a couple of people onto something new to them, that's what it's all about isn't it. 

Edit To The Siren is an In The Valley edit of Song To The Siren, This Mortal Coil's signature cover of Tim Buckley's song. Someone once told me this was sacrilege but for me its got a dubby/ Balearic splendour and is perfect Saturday afternoon vibes. 

One Day is one of the key early Bjork solo songs, from 1993's Debut. The dubby bassline, house shimmer, Nellee Hooper's production and Bjork's delivery are all superb. 

Common Land was one of the tracks on James Holden's 2023 album Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities, an album I still go back to a year later. The burbling synths, birdcall, techno- ish drums and warbling sax combine to create something very heady and transportative. It's also a tribute to the free party movement and early 90s rave and felt quite fitting for the Lion and Todmorden.

A Mountain of One's Stars Planets Dust Me was one of my favourite albums from 2022. Andy Bell's GLOK remix is a spaced out, sun- baked treat. 

Emotionally Clear is from David Holmes' Blind On A Galloping Horse, 2023's number one Bagging Area album. Seeing David Holmes bidding at the auction at AW61 from behind the decks will take some beating in 2024. 

Daydream Repeat

Four Tet's new album Three came out recently, his twelfth album (roughly) and following on the footsteps of 16 Oceans (released just as lockdown kicked in four years ago and part of the soundtrack of that time for me) and 2017's New Energy, it showcases and encapsulates everything that the Four Tet sound has come to be- skippy rhythms, layered string parts (harps, guitars, whatever they are, those signature string sounds- I love them), washes of ambient synths and the lightness of touch he brings to everything. There are eight tracks, two sides of vinyl, a concise and compact record that reveals a little more with each play. Opening track Loved came out last year, a beautiful piece of music built around a hip hop breakbeat, a shaker and  some slightly mournful but brightly coloured synths. Forty minutes later Three closes with Three Drums, also out last year, an epic piece of music that twists and turns and draws the listener in, an emotive piece of electronic music. In between he uses his familiar sounds and shifts them around- hisses and static, drums occasionally slightly out of sync to surprise you, strings, loops, harps playing little melody lines, ambient moments and dancefloor moments. Gliding Through Everything flutters. Skater is led the unexpected appearance of a guitar that could have come from a Cure record in 1990 and an echo- laden vocal sample. So Blue is broken ambient, traces of synth, a unintelligible female voice and two minutes in another slow motion drum break. 

On Daydream Repeat he locks into an urgent, propulsive groove and there are bursts of noise, possibly a guitar distorted to pieces, a piano line twinkling over the sheet wall of feedback, that suddenly drops out leaving the drums and the piano dancing around. It's superb stuff, the work of  a master craftsman at the top of his game, finding new ways to move us. 

The record sleeve doesn't give much away, a collage of repeating rectangular pictures, coloured in water colour washes, the tracklist on the back with minimal credits, and the number 3 on either side of the label on the centre of the record. Inside the sleeve there's a piece of light green A4 paper, with part of the sleeve on it, as if done at the work photocopier in a rush. Very enigmatic. 

An Hour For Tak Tent Radio

Last Sunday Tak Tent Radio hosted an hour long mix of mine, my tenth for the radio station. You can listen to it at Mixcloud and or at Tak Tent. It's mainly made up of music from 2023 with a couple of older (but still fairly recent) ones, almost all having featured at this blog at some point in the past. The Jezebell track is unavailable elsewhere and was sent out to people who pre- ordered the double vinyl edition of Jezebellearic Beats Vol 1(and although Jesse and Darren said the track would never be made available from them they were happy for other people to share it- I thought this mix was a good place for it and luckily Jesse and Darren agree). The Khidja track has become a minor Bagging Area obsession- this is the third mix its appeared on, previously making it onto my end of 2023 mix and the David Holmes at The Golden Lion one a few weeks ago.  

• CLAIR: Body Blossom (Extended Mix)
• Psychederek: Test Card Girl
• Andy Bell and Masal: Tidal Love Conversation In That Familiar Golden Orchard (Edit)
• Coyote: We Got Lost
• Justin Robertson’s Deadstock 33s: Golden Twilight 23
• Cole Odin: Dawn’s Approaching (Psychemagik Remix)
• Jezebell: A Dangerous Side
• C.A.R.: Anzu
• Khidja: Do You Know This Record Marius?
• Bedford Falls Players: Marmite Marimba
• Four Tet: Bubbles At Overlook 25th March 2019

 

Loved

Four Tet released a new song/ single last week, four minutes of typically Four Tet sounds and rhythms titled Loved. On first listen it sounds like 'another Four Tet track' but with each play reveals more of itself, a track that goes from surface to depth. A echo- laden, shuffly drum break, washes of synth and some very lovely, reverbed piano. There's some Aphex Twin in the piano, some Brian Eno in the feel, some huge crashing sounds at one minute fifty and the ghost of a voice drops in. It builds, falls apart, the piano returns, all the while the drums shuffling on and on. The drawn out end section, piano and echo repeating for thirty seconds, is  beautiful too. It sound sold and very new, like it's been around forever and also one of the first jolts of 2024. There's an album to follow later on this year.

Four Tet has become one of my most played artists in the last few years, the 2017 album New Energy and 2015's Morning/Evening 12" being the starting points I think (in that order) with the 2019 singles Teenage Birdsong and Anna Painting both taking up lots of listening space. Last year he was fairly quiet in terms of releases (but not in terms of touring with an arena tour in the US alongside Fred Again and Skrillex and festival headlining slots). In 2022 he put out Mango Feedback, a dizzying piece of music, skippity drums and bouncing bass and stringed instrument/ synths that constantly delivered little surprises. In April 2023 he released Three Drums which quietly and insistently crept into my consciousness and embedded itself there, another Four Tet track that took on new depths the more you gave into it. 

Three Drums

Back in March 2020 Four Tet released his album Sixteen Oceans, a sixteen track, hour long record that pulled everything he's brilliant at into one place, downtempo drums, chirruping synth melodies, echoes of techno and folk, ear pricking samples, the voice of Ellie Goulding, some of the Indian influences of his childhood and parents and dawn chorus ambient tracks. If you bought it on vinyl, side four was sixteen short locked groove tracks, perfect for playing around with and layering other things over the top of- if you have the equipment and skills.

The main thing about Sixteen Oceans for me though was its coinciding with the first lockdown. The album was released on 13th March 2020. We went into lockdown on the 17th March. The album arrived with me at some point that week, a week that was increasingly stressful and difficult. The last two weeks of March were the strangest time, as well adjusted to a very different life, not travelling to work, one way routes round supermarkets, an hour's exercise a day, confinement to reduce infection and protect the vulnerable (and we had a vulnerable person to protect in our house- Isaac's lack of immune system classing him in that group. Recently we found all the letters from the government advising him and others like him to stay at home and shield). The weather was dry and cool, dusk falling early until the clocks went back at the end of the month. Sixteen Oceans brings all these things back to me vividly, the sights and sounds and feel of those first few weeks of lockdown (Daniel Avery and Alessandro Cortini's Illusion Of Time, released 27th March 2020 does exactly the same). Funny how music can do that. I could pick any of the sixteen tracks but this one, Insect On Piha Beach, will do the job perfectly.  

Insect Near Piha Beach

Forty Minutes Of The Xx

Over the course of three Xx albums, a bunch of remixes and various solo releases The Xx defined some of what the 2010's would sound like, the three members conjuring up a minimalist and distinctive sound, a hint of indie- rock, reflective/ melancholic vocals by the front pair of Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim, and Jamie Xx's beats and laptop bringing in a sound from London's club scene and underground. I missed their debut album, the Mercury prize win and their media exposure putting me off (like the fool I can be sometimes about such things) and only really caught up with their second album and then especially Jamie Xx's solo album In Colour. Now, I find their music hugely affecting. Revisiting Jamie's Gil Scott Heron remix album recently sent hares running in my mind and hence today's mix. In the end, the real problem was choosing what to put in and what to leave out.

Forty Minutes Of The Xx

• Gil Scott Heron and Jamie Xx: I'll Take Care Of You
• Jamie Xx ft. Romy: Loud Places
• Jamie Xx: All Under One Roof Raving
• The Xx: Chained (John Talabot and Pional Blinded Remix)
• The Xx: VCR
• The Xx: VCR (Four Tet Remix)
• Jamie Xx: Let's Do It Again
• Jamie Xx: Gosh

In 2011 Jamie Xx remixed all of Gil Scott Heron's 2010 album, I'm New Here (it turned out to be Gil's final album). The new version, We're New Here, is full of Jamie's signature production techniques and is full of life and the joy of making sound. The album was Jamie's first full solo production, much of it created while on tour with The Xx. He said wanted it to sound like something you'd hear on pirate radio, 'a different genres... convoluted and mixed up'.  Post- dubstep apparently. 

Loud Places is the stand out from Jamie Xx's 2015 album In Colour, a record that was deservedly praised in the end of 2015 lists. This song, with Xx bandmate Romy on vocals, a song about memories,  connections, the solace found in crowds, intimacy, missing someone when they've gone, all those kinds of things. John Talabot's remix of Loud Places, the Higher Dub, is among my favourite records of the last ten years and that I didn't put it on this mix is a mystery to me too.

All Under One Roof Raving was released as a single in 2014, a celebration of nightclubs, music, scenes, youth culture, London and clothing. It samples crowd noises and voices from the 1999 film Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, the list of brands at the end of the song 

John Talabot and Pionel's remix of Chained came out in 2013, the Spanish producers pushing the source track (from The Xx's 2012 album Coexist) into less minimal territories, the vocals from Romy and Oliver Sim ducking and diving around each other.

VCR was on The Xx's self titled debut album, released in 2010, which suddenly seems like a long time ago. The minimal sound, spacious production, woodblock percussion, single guitar line and melancholic twin vocals demonstrating what made their first album so good. 

The Four Tet remix of VCR is among Kieran Hebden's best work. Yep, that good. 

Let's Do It Again was the first new track from Jamie since 2020's I Don't Know, a 2022 track designed to sound irresistible in fields and festivals. This is the radio edit, a four minute condensed journey through peaks and troughs, samples and synth arpeggios and an anthemic vocal. It was at least partly a response to emerging from lockdown and being able to do things communally again. 

Gosh is the opening track on In Colour, a deep house/ future garage/ pirate radio single that leaps out of the speakers. 'Oh my gosh', the vocal sample exclaims, 'Oh my gosh/ Easy easy/ Hold it down, hold it down' and you know exactly what he means. 

NYE 23

Let's wave goodbye to 2023 with the final Sunday mix of the year, this one stretching out with an hour and thirteen minute's worth of tunes from this year, not exactly a Best Of 2023 (although these are among the best of this year) more of a Some Of 2023. A mixture of trippy, dubby electronic music, throbbing dance tunes, chuggy indie dance, Balearic pop and Dublin guitar slinging sturm und drang. 

Happy New Year. Have fun tonight however you're choosing to celebrate. Thank you to everyone who's come here this year, to read and comment. I don't think I write this thing with an audience in mind but it helps to know that there is one, and that the people that populate it and places like this one are defintely a community. The comments and responses, particularly to some of the more personal, grief related posts, are genuinely much appreciated and a real support. Thank you, all of you. 

Onwards into 24. 

2023 NYE Mix

• Aphex Twin: Blackbox Life Recorder 21f
• Four Tet: Three Drums
• Khidja: Do You Know This Record Marius?
• Psychederek: Test Card Girl
• 10:40: Little Black Dress (Undressed Dub)
• A Man Called Adam: The Girl With The Hole In Her Heart
• David Holmes: Stop Apologising (Horse Meat Disco Vocal Remix)
• Marshall Watson and Cole Odin: Just A Daydream Away (Hardway Bros Remix)
• Islandman: Godless Ceremony (Hardway Bros Remix)
• James Holden: Common Land
• JIM: Still River Flow
• Fontaines DC: 'Cello Song

Saturday Live

Lost Village is a small festival in the woods in wildest Lincolnshire. Four Tet played there this summer, as he has done before. He's been playing enormodomes in the US recently along with Skrillex and Fred Again, which didn't look like it was up my alley at all, gigantic crowds and DJ sets with huge drops and rebuilds. His set at Lost Village though is a different animal, still full of crowd pleasing moments but on a much smaller, more intimate scale. The full two hours is at Soundcloud, freshly uploaded a week ago and a lovely way to spend a couple of hours, the ebb and flow of tracks and FX, rhythms and sounds constantly being tinkered with, the cutting between and layering tracks over each other, the long transitions and segues, the music always moving forwards. The appearance of LFO, early 90s bleep techno at its best at forty minutes is a superbly worked moment. 

Earlier this year Four Tet released a single track called Three Drums, eight minutes of classic Keiran Hebden. It starts in a fairly non- descript way, a slow beat and hissing hi hats and washes of synth but as it unfolds it takes on all kinds of new sounds and shapes, the synths becoming a wall of colours, stopping and starting again- his DJ set above in miniature. Really beguiling stuff. 

Three Drums

Half An Hour Of Four Tet

Some Kieran Hebeden/ Four Tet for this week's Sunday half hour. There's an embarrassment of riches in his back catalogue- the difficult part was narrowing it down to just six or seven tracks. Kieran takes the energy and feel of rave and combines it with ambient sounds, skippy laptop drums and Indian instruments to make something which is very much his. 

The mix starts with Teenage Birdsong, one of my favourite Four Tet tracks, taken from his Sixteen Oceans album, a record which reminds me of the first days and weeks of the first lockdown in March and April 2020 like no other. Lahaina Noon is from the Ana Painting EP which came out in 2019, a collaboration with the painter Anna Liber Lewis where he made music and she painted in response to each other. Two Thousand And Seventeen is from 2017's New Energy album. Jamie Xx's remix of Lions came out as part of the Atoms For Peace project in 2014 and Raga To Midi W was part of a collection of unreleased tracks and edits he dropped onto his Soundcloud page in 2020. There's one of his unpronounceable Wingdings tracks on there and it finishes with his epic eight minute remix of Daniel Avery's New Eternity. 

Half An Hour Of Four Tet

• Teenage Birdsong
• Lahaina Noon
• Two Thousand And Seventeen
• Lion (Jamie Xx Remix)
• Raga To Midi W
• ʅ͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡(ƟӨ)ʃ͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡ ꐑ(ཀ ඊູ ఠీੂ೧ູ࿃ूੂ✧✧✧✧✧✧ළඕั࿃ूੂ࿃ूੂ,
• Quick Eternity (Four Tet Remix)

Green

We were walking in Trafford Park last weekend (the world's first industrial park and still the largest in Europe fact fans!). On the side wall of an enormous grain refinery were these patches of green paint, a cover up job for some graffiti. The green on green (not matching in the slightest really), the drips  running down the wall and random block shapes, plus the incorporation of brickwork and the fire hydrant sign really caught my eye- this is art isn't it? Accidental art or ambient art or industrial art maybe. I could see them being printed up as postcards or onto t- shirts, canvasses and tote bags.

We haven't had any Four Tet here for a while so here's a gorgeous piece of green ambient- turning- into- electronica to go with the photos, a track from last year's 16 Oceans album. Nature sounds, washes of found sounds and then one of those skittering melodies he's so good at, music that shimmers and dances about.

Green

One of my friends I play football with has a son who's just left university and spent the summer doing what twenty one years old should- holidays, dossing about, going to festivals. He played football with us too, filling in when sundry middle aged men couldn't make it due to commitments or injury or old age. He came back from one festival Lost Village, a festival that looks like its run and organised as festivals should be- smallish, low key, leftfield artists, mix of ages, funny stages and tents hidden in forests and woods. I asked him who he'd seen and whether he'd caught Daniel Avery (who I knew was playing there). He had and also said he'd seen someone called Four Tet headlining in the tent- the clips he showed me on his phone looked amazing, a chilled but enthusiastic crowd and Kieron Hebden raising the roof. I've just discovered his set, all two hours of it is on Soundcloud here and Youtube here.