Five Go Mad For Friday

Some tracks from the corners of the internet you might not delve into to brighten up this Friday in April with little tying them together other than they all caught my eyes and ears recently. 

First, from January 2025, a German band called Magic Source releasing on Favourite Recordings, a label based in Paris- a funky jazz/ disco cover version of A Guy Called Gerald's Voodoo Ray. 

There's an argument that Voodoo Ray is the best British house/ dance record, the numero uno of UK dance music. Magic Source manage to bring a freshness to Voodoo Ray, a quirkiness that makes it bounce- the ooh ah ahh vocals, the funked up glockenspiels, the springy rhythm, the synth squiggle four minutes in, all in all a certain je ne sais quoi to a track that began life in the Crescents in Hulme in late 80s Manchester. 

Magic Source pair Voodoo Ray with Interplanetary Bounce, their own composition, light on its feet and looking to boogie. Find both at Bandcamp. 

Next, from Nottingham and the Coyote duo is an EP that goes heavy on their recent dub excursions. Nag Champa is three tracks, led by Fittest, a Balearic/ dub crossover with toasting, rolling hand drums and whistles. Nag Champa Dub follows, a Nyabinghi- inspired slow and low cut, psychedelic Jamaica with melodica. The final of the three is Teacher, less dub, more chilled Balearica, with one of those expertly selected vocal samples that Coyote are so good at finding- 'whatever resonates, resonates... no big deal... there's nothing you have to do, this is the wonderfulness of consciousness'. The Nag Champa EP is at Bandcamp. 

Thirdly, Coco Steel and Lovebomb put out this at the end of March, a full on acid party track, totally infectious and sonically superb. E1 AC1D0 is sheer joy- a rocking breakbeat, acid squelch, birdsong, female vocal, six minutes of summer come early. Find it here. 

Finally, another cover- Kenneth Bager and Le Bacoll with a dance/ Balearic cover of R.E.M.'s What's the Frequency, Kenneth? The first time I clicked on this I wasn't sure about it at all- and left it alone for some time. I can easily see that some R.E.M. fans may see it as sacrilege but it's grown on me, I can see it causing a fuss on certain dancefloors at certain times and I'm pretty sure Michael Stipe would be out there shaking his arse to it. 

This is the remixed version of Kenneth from the 2019 remix of Monster, a record that producer Scott Litt went back to and remixed. The 1994 version of Monster was full of guitars and Michael Stipe's voice was low in the mix, there was a sense of murkiness about some of the songs and as the group stepped out for their arena tour a vague feeling that the album hadn't quite nailed it. I don't think anyone in the band was especially keen for Litt to remix the record in 2019, or even asked for it, it was one of those things that just happened and was interesting enough. Weirdly, what maybe sounded off in 1994, sounds just fine now. But the companion version is an interesting listen regardless. 

Litt's version of Kenneth pushes everything to the fore, Stipe's vocal included, strips the guitars a bit and makes the drums louder. The rhythmic pull of Bill Berry's drums is odd on this version, he seems to be holding the song back rather than letting it go. 

What's The Frequency, Kenneth? (2019 Remix)

Forty Minutes Of Andrew Weatherall

It's day three of AW61 at The Golden Lion in Todmorden today, a day of dub and the Double Gone Chapel with Curley, Sherman and Nicky General bringing the dub and Rico, Louise and Waka bringing the Double Gone sounds. At the time of writing I don't know how yesterday went but let's assume it was really good and The Flightpath Estate DJs pulled it off in fine style.

Today's mix is a tribute to Andrew Weatherall, with a selection of tracks that feature samples of his voice, a lengthy tribute from Kenneth Bager and an unofficial and unreleased oddity ripped from a radio show. As well as being a top class DJ, remixer and producer Andrew was a great interviewee, eminently quotable and entertaining. Most of the tracks below feature snippets from interviews he did during the 2010s, the topics under discussion including the importance of Factory Records, his A Certain Ratio fixation, and whether acid house is in the end 'just a fucking disco'.

Forty Minutes Of Andrew Weatherall

• Prana Crafter: Starlight, Sing Us A Melody
• Sabres Of Paradise: Clock Factory (Joe Mckechnie North Star Edit)
• IWDG: In A Lonely Place (David Holmes Remix)
• BTCOP: Just A Disco (Lights On The Hills Mix)
• BTCOP: Just A Disco (Blavatsky and Tolley Mix)
• Kenneth Bager: Late Night Symphony (Tribute To Andrew Weatherall)
• BBC Radiophonic Workshop: Electricity, Language And Me

Prana Crafter released Morpho Mystic, a six track album in September 2020. The album is the work of William Sol, a psychedelic/ folk musician. Starlight, Sing Us A Melody is a few minutes of gently psyche acoustic and electric guitars with the voice of Mr Weatherall appearing at the end. 

Clock Factory was a fifteen minute excursion into spooked industrial ambience on Sabres Of Paradise's 1993 album Sabresonic. Joe Mckechnie's edit is entirely unofficial, Andrew's voice dropped in to a shorter version of Clock Factory. Joe is a Liverpool based DJ, producer and remixer, formerly a member of 80s Liverpool band Benny Profane whose name was all over the city's gig posters in Liverpool in the late 80s, regularly supporting bigger names and the touring indie bands who passed through venues such as the Mountford Hall, the Haigh Building and Planet X. 

IWDG is Ian Weatherall and Duncan Grey (also known as Sons Of Slough who played at The Golden Lion last night). In 2021 they covered New Order's In A Lonely Place, a tribute to Andrew and to Factory Records. David Holmes was one of the remixers, sampling Andrew's voice as well as singing Bernard's words. 

Just A Disco came out in November 2022, a track built around a quote from Andrew where he mused on whether coloured lights, dry ice and trance inducing music was just a fucking disco or whether it's something more than that- a gnostic ceremony he might have said with a smirk. The Lights On The Hill Mix is ten minutes of ambient/ Balearic gorgousness. The Blavatsky and Tolley Mix is much thumpier with the title rattling round and round. 

Kenneth Bager is headman at Music For Dreams in Copenhagen. His Late Night Symphony is from an EP released in 2022 called Stones And Steel and is a ten minute long tribute to Andrew- no voice on this one but a very lovely piece of wonky electronic music all the same. 

Electricity, Language And Me is a 2013 collaboration between the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Andrew that remains unreleased. There are some unreleased remixes as well which I hope will see the light of day at some point. This is a short piece with Andrew providing a spoken word vocal, ripped from one of his NTS radio shows which were the gateway to so much music, both new and old. 

Monday's Long Song

These wild goats on a cliff at dusk looking down at the humans in Lindos town eating and drinking on rooftop terraces, looked like they might be making judgements about us or at the very least wondering what we were all doing. 

This song came up on a CD I made for the car. I'd pulled it out of a pile in the car- as much a mobile CD library as a car really- and put it in the stereo. Ten minutes of transcendence from Kenneth Bager, recorded in tribute to Andrew Weatherall, originally from an EP titled Stones & Steel and then also from an album last year, Late Night Symphonies (which you can get here). 

Late Night Symphony (Tribute To Andrew Weatherall)

It kicks off with a thumping beat and then some hugely distorted bass. The wobbly, tough edge gradually gives way to something more elegiac- a piano that hints at Smokebelch, some synth parts that grow in intensity and then a refrain which pulls in all the right places emotionally. Halfway in a violin takes the lead and then we're off for a gloriously melancholic/ euphoric five minutes.

Bagging Area/ Ban Ban Ton Ton Mix

For some time now Dr Rob, the man who runs the standard setting blog Ban Ban Ton Ton, a one stop shop for all things Balearic and otherwise, has been asking me to write reviews for him. Since the new year I've written some album reviews which I don't think I've linked here, so today's Sunday mix post pulls those reviews from the first half of 2023 together for those who might be interested in them, and provides a sampler in the form of a forty three minute long mix below. 

Ban Ban Ton Ton/ Bagging Area Guest Review Mix

• Jon Hassell: Neon Nights
• Konformer: Konformer
• Tolga Boyuk and Kenneth Bager: Betrayal
• TECWAA: I Terra Dub
• Roe Deers: Can't Remember
• Yargo: Marimba
• Sorcerer: Zero Return
• Eloah: Logan Ede

Jon Hassell was a pioneering New York based trumpeter/ composer. His Fourth World music fused primitivism and futurism in the late 70s and 80s and led him to work with Talking Heads, David Sylvian and Carl Craig among others. Psychogeography is a compilation of late 80s recordings combining avant- jazz, soundtracks, psychogeography, ambient music and Situationism, which sounds off- putting but is great fun. My review is here. 

Konformer are a three piece from Nuremburg, signed to Manchester's Jason Boardman's new label Before I Die. Five lovely synth- led cosmische instrumentals. Reviewed by me here and highly recommended (the album I mean not the review). 

Tolga Boyuk and Kenneth Bager wrote and recorded a soundtrack to a film that hasn't been shot yet, East Is North, in two days. Tangerine Dream, Vangelis and John Carpenter all feature as reference points. Read my review here. 

TECWAA is from York and has released an EP on New York's Throne Of Blood, a label on something of a hot streak. My review said something like 'sci fi, deep house, cinematic psychedelic dub'. Here. 

Roe Deers were one artist on a compilation put out by Parisienne label Lumiere Noir, twelve previously unreleased slices of 'deep and dark electronics'. Read my review here if you've got this far down.  

Yargo were a Manchester blues/ funk/ dub group who missed the boat in the late 80s Manchester boom but are fondly remembered. Their proto- house/ Latin B-side features on the new compilation from DJ Luke Una, E- cultura soul Vol. 2, a multi- artist tribute to late nights, dancing and the widest spread of music you can imagine. Eloah's Logan Ede comes from the same album, Brazilian soul from the late 1970s. My review is here. 

Sorcerer is from Califronia and his second album Bubble Funk is a blast of short, funky instrumentals celebrating skateboarding, cassette culture, home studios, 70s funk and Balearic pop. Reviewed here. 

I also reviewed Reinhard Vanbergen's Meditation On Modern Modes, an hour long ambient tour de force from Belgium's multi- instrumentalist but couldn't work any of the ten minute pieces onto the mix above. Read and listen here. 

Monday's Long Song

In 1989 a Danish group called Dr. Baker, Kenneth Bager's first musical outfit, released a record called Let's Dream Together, what Bager called a paradise record, the opposite of rave. Heavily inspired by Italo- house and Manuel Gottsching's E2/ E4 (and also by Sueno Latino, built around a sample from E2/ E4), the record was pressed as a one sided 12" in a very small quantity. A year later Boy George picked up on it and offered to record a vocal for the track but nothing happened. Kenneth Bager's Music For Dreams label has re- issued it thirty years later following multiple requests from a number of labels to put it back out. The master tapes were retrieved and baked, some new stems discovered and added, a bit of tinkering and hey presto! The New Age Orchestra's slice of paradise dream house from 1989 is reborn. The original of Let's Dream Together goes for silly money on Discogs. The digital re- issue can be got here for 10 Danish Krona (approximately one pound). 

Monday Mix

I did another mix for Scotland's Tak Tent Radio and it went out yesterday from their nerve centre. I put it together back in March when the days were shorter and I seemed to spend a lot of time walking round in the dark after work- seems a bit gloomy now that it's May and the evenings are lighter much later. At first I intended it to be a fully ambient/ drone mix, partly because I was listening to a lot of ambient music in my headphones while walking and partly because I'd just begun reading Harry Sword's book, Monolithic Undertow, a history and appreciation of the drone from Neolithic times to the present day (highly recommended if you haven't read it) but I got twenty five minutes into the mix and thought we needed some drums (and a voice or two too). Tak Tent Radio is here, loads of great stuff to listen to. Bagging Area Tak Tent Three is at Mixcloud. Tracklist below. 

Tak Tent Three

• Luke Schneider: Anteludium
• Daniel Avery: Tremor
• A Winged Victory For The Sullen: The Dead Outnumber The Living
• Richard Norris: Hilma
• Craven Faults: Cupola Smelt Mill
• Pye Corner Audio: Quarry Rave
• Herrmann Kristoferson: Gone Gold
• Ruf Dug: Dominica (Kenneth Bager’s Sunset Ambient Mix)
• Andrew Weatherall and Michael Smith: Estuary Embers
• Art Of Noise: Moments In Love
• Cheval Sombre: It’s Not Time
• Vangelis/ Blade Runner: Pris Meets JF Sebastian 
• Vangelis/ Blade Runner: Spinner Ascent

Dominica

It's Easter Sunday, the blossom's blossoming, the sun has been out, we can have another family or up to six people from different households in our gardens- the world is our oyster (and the cynic in me could easily follow that with Paul Weller's line from When You're Young about how 'your future's a clam' but let's stick with being optimistic for the duration of this post at least). This track is a Kenneth Bager remix of Mancunian Ruf Dug's Dominica from his 2014 album, an album written on the island of Guadeloupe drawing musical  lines between Manchester and Ibiza. Bager's remix with found sounds (seagulls, waves lapping, boats gently tugging at ropes) and warm synth stabs, a lazy bass part and some woodwind is very chilled and also very abstract, barely even a song any more, more a moment turned into sound. 

Dominica (Kenneth Bager's Sunset Ambient Mix)

Stones And Steel

Today (Wednesday I think but who can be sure?) I have three songs from Danish producer Kenneth Bager that make up a new e.p (priced at thirty kroner, about £3). The first, Stones And Steel, is a dreamy song with vocals from Findlay Brown, that starts out like a Balearic ballad but picks up the beat. Cocktails at sundown on the terrace. Crickets chirruping.

Stones And Steel is followed by JLP Smoked A Doobie, a slowed down, chilled out affair with a violin and woodblocks. Dusk has now fallen, the stars are coming out.

Last up is Bager's tribute to Andrew Weatherall and an emotional ten minute dancer called Late Night Symphony with that A Love From Outer Space chug and a huge bass wobble. Shake that blanket off and hit the floor- it's either your living room or kitchen floor admittedly but it's still a floor.

Monday's Long Song

One more ramble about politics and then I'll eave it for the time being. I'm sure most of you don't want to read another gloomy and pessimistic state of the nation blogpost but here it is anyway. I was pondering on Friday night as the clock counted down to 11pm that in the time since I've taken an interest in politics (sometime around 1983-4, the Falklands War and the miner's strike) that I can only remember celebrating a political/electoral win once, which was 1997 (obviously). We danced in the forecourt of the Conservative Club that night, drunk on beer and ousting the Tories after two decades of hard right rule. The Conservative Club was dark, they'd all long gone home but dancing in their empty car park was a victory, letting the light in. The sun shone the next day. But even the second win in 2001 didn't really seem like a victory more an expectation and a shrug. Every other election or vote has for me been a defeat. We seem to be reversing as a nation, the open, welcoming, liberal face the UK had in the 90s and 00s looks to have gone replaced by a nationalist, mean spirited, openly hostile one. It's not just politics. Work has been heavy recently too, more than just recently actually, heavy for some time- long hours, pressure, lots of top down stuff, low morale. Et fucking cetera. It all adds up doesn't it?

I've just read that back and very nearly deleted the whole thing- it's just more whinging and I'm not sure it helps. Blogging does lift the spirits and is by and large a positive medium. Writing snarky posts is easy, putting things down and slagging things off, and when done well it can be very funny but there's always Twitter for that. The spirit of music blogs has mainly been positive, enthusiastic and outward looking- listen to this, you might like it, I do, download it and then buy it somewhere. Try this one, for example, Water Woman by Kenneth Bager, a Danish DJ, musician and producer, the man behind the Music For Dreams label. In 2018 he released this ten minute beauty with vocals from Farafi, slow and ominous drums but then a parting of the clouds to let the sunshine in.



The B-side is a dubbed out version, opening with running water and FX, synths buzzing and then the thumping rhythm and a heady trip out.

No Water (Dub Mix)