Walrus

Duncan Gray's latest track, available here for just £1, is a monster, an eight minute epic that slides in and then starts snarling, the bassline growling and showing its tusks. Walrus was recorded back in July and is out now. It sounds like it emerged from the sea to make its presence known, weighs half a ton and will return to the choppy waters as soon as it's finished with you. 

Duncan's label Tici Taci has been celebrating ten years in the business of releasing chuggy dancefloor based electronic/ dub/ slo mo/ cosmic tracks. By nature much of this kind of music is ephemeral, made for the dancefloor but not necessarily intended to last. It's remarkable how much of Volume 1 and Volume 2 has withstood ten years and still sounds fresh. The latest release, Volume 3, is tracks from more recent times, with many artists who have featured here in the last few years-  Welsh cosmiche/ indie dancers The Long Champs, Tirana's Balearic Uj Pa Gaz, Duncan and Ian Weatherall's own Sons Of Slough, the brilliantly named Boy Division, plus Field Of Dreams, Martin Eve and Jack Butters. You can buy Tici Taci Decade Volume 3 here. 

A couple of samples from Volume 3 to whet your whistle (but you could dip into any of the sixteen tracks and hit gold). This is Martin Eve's Night Train featuring the talents of Fluke's Jon Fugler. Martin is immune suppressed, has been seriously unwell and been isolating since Covid hit in 2020. His continued cheeriness in the face of this coupled with his righteous ire at the way some people have been left behind since the government deemed Covid to be over, is inspiring. For Martin and half a million people like him (and for us, who lost a son to Covid) it's not over. Night Train is a gorgeous slice of slinky chug- house to make the next seven minutes seem better.

Men Of Letters came out on The Long Champs album Straight To Audio, an album I raved about in 2020. Men Of Letters is a sunrise kind of moment, pattering drums and glistening guitar lines, everything heading upwards as the early morning mist burns off. 

Monday's Long Song

I posted this photo on Twitter last week, the contents of a box I found in the loft. These cassettes have survived numerous house moves and various culls. I was happy to find them, the Proustian rush was enjoyable. Many of them date from the late 80s when it was in lots of ways a different world and I was a different person. Someone called Jon Fugler saw the photo and commented 'good haul, the ladybird is my favourite...' to which I replied 'Fluke', a useful piece of information I thought as the band's name isn't on the front of the cassette. It was then pointed out to me by @AcidGrandads that Jon Fugler was the singer in Fluke. Sometimes you just have to give a virtual shrug, smile and face palm.

Fluke were ace, an acid house/ electronic band who crossed all the genres from techno to house to ambient, guitars, synths, samples, drum machines and vocals. Their song Pan Am Into Philly is one of the great lost ones of the era and the version on Creation's Keeping The Faith, Philly (Jamourphous Mix), is superb and a real personal favourite from that time. The album with the ladybird on it is from 1991,a live album from a time when people doubted whether this type of band could really perform live- the band doubted it as well as the computers weren't always reliable enough to survive a gig. Nevertheless the album, Out (In Essence) is a great snapshot of the group.

Garden Of Blighty (Out/In Essence)

What makes my inability to recognise Jon Fugler even worse is that in my final year at university I knew Hugh Bryder (who was Fluke's tour DJ and friend of a friend, and Hugh was supposed to be DJing at my wedding in 1995 but was stuck on a train).