Monday's Long Song

A remix from the end of October that I should have posted then but something else always nudged it a few days back and then suddenly it's Monday and, hey presto, it finds a home in the Monday long song slot. Max Essa and David Harks are The Clean Trip. Max has been making electronic music since the 90s, releasing on Warp and Manchester's Paper Recordings, plus the D.I.Y. Sound System. In July this year the duo released an EP as The Clean Trip, four chuggy, summer sounding tracks, dreamy/ blissed out Balearic sunset pop. You can find it here.  Two of the tracks got the remix treatment and this one has been getting repeat plays round the Bagging Area way, memories of summer and the warmth of the sun- Lobster Boys remixed by Hifi Sean, seven minutes and fifteen seconds of dubbed out, spaced out, end of the night, Italo cosmic disco splendour, with a gently sighing vocal.

Wasn't that a lovely way to spend some of your Monday in the dull, misty, murk of November? It's what Dr Rob at Ban Ban Ton Ton would call a chocolate milk and brandy kind of track. You can buy it plus a Takovoi remix of Magic Eyes at Bandcamp. 

Yes

This song, Yes by McAlmont & Butler, came out in mid- May 1995. In eighteen months time it will be thirty years old, which seems ridiculous- as does the idea that the mid- 90s are now three decades ago. Bernard Butler and David McAlmont had both left their previous bands in acrimony, Bernard walking out of Suede and David out of Thieves, and when they bumped into each other, in the Jazz Cafe in Camden, both were looking for some kind of statement to announce their return and to kick back against their former bandmates. Bernard had written the song as an instrumental and was coming out of 'a very dark place'. It was , he has said, 'a very liberating song'. McAlmont had a verse and the voice of an angel. Between them they recorded this enormous piece of 60s inspired, Wall of Sound pop music, a song to be sung loudly and in that sweet spot between anger and celebration. 

Yes

I turned 25 four days after Yes was released. Isaac would have been 25 this week had he lived. When I heard Yes last week it struck a chord with me, a song about survival and sticking up two fingers to the world, but sitting here typing this now, three days before Isaac's birthday, I'm not sure I do feel that much better. It still feels really shit. 

Yes, to paraphrase McAlmont, I do need November to be over. 

David McAlmont has recorded an album with Hifi Sean, a producer, songwriter, musician and DJ and also the former/ current singer of The Soup Dragons. Their album Happy Ending came out either last year or this year- the full vinyl release was this year so I think it counts as a 2023 album- and is a joy from start to finish, a beautiful stew of dance rhythms, synths, Bollywood strings, pulsing bass, piano and McAlmont's extraordinary voice. A psychedelic electronic soul soundtrack according to Last Night From Glasgow, and they ain't wrong. 

All In The World

Happy Ending

Hifi Sean and David McAlmont's album Happy Ending finally got its full release last Friday, after months of hold ups at the vinyl pressing plants, three singles as teasers, a limited vinyl release last year (I was lucky enough to get a copy a few months ago) and recently a free to download lyric booklet. However you have received it, in whatever format, it has been well worth the wait, one of the 2023's best albums already. 

Hifi Sean, former Soup Dragon now DJ, producer and remixer, had an album out in 2018, an album with multiple guest vocalists ranging from Yoko Ono to Bootsy Collins and Alan Vega. David McAlmont guested on Like Josephine Baker and this was clearly the starting point of a beautiful working relationship. Sean's music conjures up a 21st century psychedelic soul soundtrack, with sweeping Bollywood strings on six of the songs, recorded in Bangalore, clubby drums, driving basslines, gorgeous soaring melodies and David's startling voice. The opening song and title track Happy Ending is seven minutes of glorious music, starting with found sound and voices before the drums kick in and a Motown bassline starts pushing and then the strings gliding up and down... and then McAlmont joins in, an angelic but world weary voice, singing of 'good outcomes and happy endings/ where do you want to start?'

Happy Ending is almost worth the price of admission on its own. Over the next four sides of vinyl/ twelve songs they repeat the trick time and time again, a perfect collection of songs that really need to be heard and appreciated as an album, tackling the big topics from racism and Black Lives Matter as those protests unfolded following the death of George Floyd in 2020 to the gay nightlife hedonism of Hurricanes, to Sean writing during the midst of a breakdown, trying to rebuild his life. Beautiful is the kind of life affirming adult pop music we all need to hear on those days when getting up and out just doesn't seem worth the effort. Viva Hifi Sean, David McAlmont and happy endings. 

Maybe

I read an interview with Nick Cave where he spoke about the music he's been enjoying recently, the grown up pop music of the early 70s, songs like Wichita Lineman, Suspicious Minds, Always On My Mind, Galveston, By The Time I Get To Phoenix and artists like Elvis, Jimmy Webb, Kris Kristofferson and Glen Campbell. Nothign too groundbreaking there maybe but as Nick says 'big, classic, grand themes'. The interviewer, Sean O'Hagen, added, 'those songs still sound so ambitious- the lyrical sophistication, the melodies, the arrangements. They do seem to belong to another time, another world though...'.

It made me think of the songs Hifi Sean and David McAlmont have released this year (and the album that's due next year) which have something of that scale about them- the grand themes and the ambition- coupled with the feel of some of the music of the 90s when house music/ dance music infiltrated the mainstream, dance beats and orchestras were used side by side. Their record label are calling it 'a psychedelic electronic soul soundtrack'. Sean's programmed drums, production and the strings are magical and sumptuous, music to bathe in. David's vocals soar on top. 

In April they released  The Skin I'm In. I thought I'd posted it previously but apparently not. The sort of song that works its way under your skin, David singing of social injustice and racism.

Maybe  came out in June, a soaring, giddy, wide eyed song with the message that 'anyone can fall in love'. Music with grand themes and ambition. 

In Love With Life

Some optimism for Monday morning, a quality in short supply. In 2017 Hifi Sean released an album called Ft. , every song featuring a different vocalist or collaborator. Sean was once the singer and leader of The Soup Dragons. After the band ended he became a DJ, living and playing in New York in the mid- 90s and then based in London in the 00s. The album has a range of musical partners, from Norman Blake from his Bellshill guitar band days to Billie Ray Martin, Alan Vega and Bootsy Collins but nowhere does it sound better than on this song with Yoko Ono. 

In Love With Life

The chunky drums and sweeping synth strings are lovely and Yoko's spoken word vocal tops it off beautifully. There's a nice animated video too. 

Yoko Ono is a much maligned figure for various reasons, some of them unpleasant 'isms' I think. I haven't seen Get Back but reviews suggest it's gone some way towards painting her in 1969/ 70 a little differently from the woman who split up the world's favourite pop group. 

When All This Is Over

A new Bagging Area mix for Sunday, an optimistic sounding one now that the days are getting longer and the summer seems to be just round the corner. A lot of these songs have been posted here recently individually but they sounded good together. I'm not sure there's a huge amount of cause for optimism with the continuing, ceaseless flow of bad news, bad government and virus rates increasing but maybe it's best to turn the news channel off for a while and unplug. It's at Mixcloud, it won't embed but you can find it here. 

As the voice says in the opening Coyote song, 'when all this is over.... I plan to go north...' 

• Coyote: Café Con Leche
• Private Agenda: Malanai Ascending (Seahawks Remix)
• Chris Coco: Rainy Season
• Reinhard Vanbergen and Charlotte Carulaerts: Julien
• Primal Scream: Inner Flight
• Justin Deighton and Leo Zero: I Feel Edit
• Cantoma: The Mountain (Lexx Remix)
• HiFi Sean Ft. Yoko Ono: In Love With Life
• A Certain Ratio: Berlin (album version)
• Coyote: Feedback Valley
• Future Beat Alliance: Birth (Claude Young Remix)

I Know As Much As The Day I Was Born

This song has been posted at various blogs recently, many of them friends of this blog, but it seems tailor made for Bagging Area in many ways and it's a feelgood, upbeat dance song for Friday- and we could all do with a bit of feelgood and upbeat for Friday. 

Hifi Sean (Sean Dickson) got hold of the master tapes of Fire Island's 1998 cover version of Shout To The Top. Finding the original vocal part, sung by legend Loleatta Holloway, Sean re-wrote the track from the bottom up, in the end providing three different mixes- house, soul/ disco and orchestral horses for courses. Bassline, four on the floor, lovely late 80s pianos, strings, gospel backing vox and then Loleatta. Hands in the air. Hugging strangers. Lights come up. End of the night. Crowd spills out into the night. Here. 

Hifi Sean was in a former musical life the frontman of The Soup Dragons, the original indie dance crossover band. His journey from there to here shouldn't be too surprising given how enthusiastic he was about dance music back in 1989. The 1998 version of Shout To The Top isn't too shabby either, the work of Fire Island aka Terry Farley and Pete Heller (both men the subject of various posts here in the last eleven years, Boy's Own being one of the cornerstones of my record collection). Fire Island's cover has a more NYC, Salsoul flavour. 

Shout To The Top (Fire Island Radio Edit)

Back in 1984 Shout To The Top was the seventh single released by The Style Council. By this point Paul Weller had put significant distance between his then current band and his previous one. Shout To The Top is a classic Style Council single, the equal of most things The Jam released- those staccato strings, the thumping pace, Weller's vocal, the surge into the chorus. Shout To The Top, then and now, is hugely uplifting dance pop, a message of solidarity and determination and a refusal to beaten down in times of economic and political uncertainty- with a smile on its face. 

Shout To The Top