Forty Five Minutes Of Neo- Indie Dance

I was never a fan of the term indie- dance back in the 1989- 1992 heyday. It seemed reductive and a little sneery, music press shorthand for guitar bands suddenly getting onto the dancefloor and finding a remixer who could help them crossover. Much of the music was brilliant but the way it was portrayed and written about was not. There was an element of bandwagon jumping too. But those records- the remixes of Happy Mondays Wrote For Luck, Fool's Gold, Weatherall's 12" remixes of songs from Screamadelica and then of everybody else, Flowered Up, New Fast Automatic Daffodils, The Soup Dragons (ahead of the pack as singer Sean is always keen to point out, releasing I'm Free ahead of Primal Scream's Loaded)- still sound like sonic gold and can still fill a dance floor. 

There's been a renaissance of the sound, the shuffly drums, psychedelic guitars, extended length tracks, cosmic synth sounds and freewheeling spirit circling back into the world. Recently Das Druid, Marshall Watson and Cole Odin, several of Sean Johnston Hardway Bros remixes, Holy Youth Movement and others have been reinvigorating a sound that is now over three decades old. The temptation to throw some of them together into a Sunday mix, a revival of the sound of Thursday night indie nights at late 80s nightclubs but with a bunch of 21st century tracks, was too much. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Neo- Indie Dance

• Strange Fruit: Monopolar
• Das Druid: Freedom
• Holy Youth Movement: Better Together (Hardway Bros Cosmic Intervention Mix)
• Marshall Watson and Cole Odin: Just A Daydream Away (Space Flight Mix)
• Le Carousel: Echo Spiegel (Curses Liquid Metal Mix)
• Jagwar Ma: Come Save Me (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• Psychederek: Thinkin' Bout U Pt. 2 (Venus)

Strange Fruit are an indie- dance/ psychedelic/ cosmische band from Jakarta. Their forthcoming album Drips comes with remixes- Hardway bros and Tom Furse from The Horrors- and four songs, all of which mine that seam that got us shaking our action at the point were the 80s became the 90s. Shuffly drums, burbling synths, cosmische production and blissed out vocals all present and correct.  

Das Druid are from Australia, a band who are open about their influences, describing their Das Druid EP as a 'love letter to the evolving spirit of the Madchester scene'. Rather than shy away from it, they've embraced the comparisons. The EP comes with Justin Robertson remixes (in his folk- dub Five Green Moons guise), a man who moved to Manchester in the mid- 80s specifically for the music (and the university), and one from South Manchester's own Ruf Dug. 

Holy Youth Movement are from Bristol, a five piece taking cues from Primal Scream and Underworld with Jagz Kooner at the controls. Sean Johnston's Hardway Bros provided two remixes, both of which are sprinkled with indie- dance dancefloor gold dust. 

San Francisco pairing Marshal Watson and Cole Odin's Just A Daydream Away were a 2023 highlight, an EP with various versions of a cosmic/ indie- dance song, smothered in a sheen of day glo early 90s via 2020s production that glides and shimmers. Hardway Bros weighed in with a pair of remixes of this one too. 

Le Carousel's The Humans Will Destroy us is already sounding like one of the albums of 2026, a ten track synths/ guitars celebration of/ farewell to humanity. Last year's single Echo Spiegel was remixed by Berlin based producer Curses who put a  chunky 1991 indie- dance break under Phil's psychedelic/ electronics and pushed it all to the fore. 

Jagwar Ma were an Australian psychedelic/ dance trio from 2012 who made two albums between 2013 and 2016. In 2011 they released Come Save Me as a single and it came with an Andrew Weatherall remix. Between 1989 and 1991 Andrew did as much as anyone to invent a new sound, guitars and dance beats, samples and sequencers. By 1992 he was keen to move on and to leave indie- dance behind. In 2013 he remixed Jagwar Ma following a jaunt to Australia, sticking a massive indie- dance breakbeat underneath the song and in so doing reinventing a sound that he invented twenty years previously, a decade ahead of some younger bands then re- discovering the sound. Weatherall absolutely shines as a remixer here. 

Psychederek is from Stretford, a young musician/ DJ with a growing and excellent back catalogue. The sound of a psychedelic Stretford. His Thinkin' Bout U single came out last year, four different versions with the Pt. 2 Venus mix built around that indie- dance shuffle. 

Bagging Area Book Club Chapter Three- Solstice Edition

Today is the summer solstice, midsummer, the longest day and shortest night, a celebration of the sun that has been observed since the Neolithic era. To mark this event I thought I'd add to my recent Bagging Area Book Club posts with some solstice adjacent reading material. In May 2019 the first edition of Weird Walk was published, specifically timed to coincide with May Day (Beltane in Gaelic). Since then there have been a further six editions, with the Number Seven in 2023 the most recent although as the photo above shows I only have issues one, three and seven so far. Weird Walk was started by three friends 'walking and engaging with the British landscape and its lore'. Forty pages printed on good quality card, well designed with quality photographs and illustrations and packed with interesting articles, Weird Walk is a treasure trove to be dipped in and out of. The first page of the first issue quotes Julian Cope in The Modern Antiquarian- 'people don't go anywhere unless there's a signpost'- and from that point has included articles on Medieval graffiti, dolmen, Dungeon Synth, flat roof pubs, a walk around Avebury, a feature on the life of 'seminal Tudor loon' William Kempe, an interview with writer Ben Edge, the folklore of booze and of cheese, explorations of portals in Wiltshire, acid folk, author Benjamin Myers writing abut Lindisfarne, and the pastoral ambient cassette sounds of the label Verdant Wisdom. 

Acid folk? Here's some Pentangle from 1969...

House Carpenter

Weird Walk is well worth looking out for and can be bought online from their website, each edition available for £5.50. 

I thought I'd throw in some more sounds for the solstice, some acid house rather than acid folk, recent releases to soundtrack tonight and beyond. First up is Temples remixed by Jono from Jagwar Ma, originally released in 2014 for Record Shop Day and recently made available at Temples' Bandcamp page. Shelter Song (Jagwar Ma Jono's Wrong Mix) takes Temples psyche rock and gives it an electronic thump and pulse, the synthline twisting its way round and round. 

Richard Sen, who compiled one of the best compilations of last year and a superb remix EP to accompany it (Dream The Dream) and who appeared on our Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1 album with the speaker shaking sounds of Tough On Chug, Tough On The Causes Of Chug, is set to release a debut solo album later this year, an album called India Man. To lead into it he's released a single, Hills Of Kashmir, a cosmic disco/ acid house thumper that goes on with little let up in intensity and is very good indeed. 

Richard also turns up today at the latest release by teenage wonderkid OBOST who's debut album Er... Hello? I wrote about a month ago. Sen has remixed Don't Want To Be Alone, a star sailing, bleepy, dynamic version of the song with Bobby's vocal on top. The EP is out today at Bandcamp. Richard's remix is worth the price of admission alone but you also get OBOST's own Jittery remix of the song and a new track, Take The Message. Happy solstice. 

Weatherall Remix Friday Twelve

Back in 2013 Andrew Weatherall was on the crest of a new wave, his skills as a remixer in demand again, a new generation of artists wanting his magic dust sprinkled over their work and the man in fine form, producing remixes that took in a variety of styles and influences- dub, post- punk, kraut, Balearic, acid and more all showed up across a slew of remixes. This one found a sweet spot somewhere between indie- dance and techno, the sugar psychedelia of Australian band Jagwar Ma rejigged with a tough drum track, juddering synth sounds and singer Gabriel's compressed vocal. 

Come Save Me

Moving to London Jagwar Ma's Jono Ma- the man who does the guitars, synths, drum machines, samples and production- found himself in studio space adjoining Mr Weatherall's, in a facility in Tottenham. In 2016 Jagwar Ma released a second album, Every Now And Zen. In 2017, having sent the stems and tracks next door Andrew provided a pair of remixes of the song Give Me A Reason, one making it to a 12" release. These are a step away again from the Come save Me remix, a version which could easily have soundtracked mayhem at indie nights on dancefloors in 1991. These are more spacey, the rippling cosmische extended for up to ten minutes, waves of synthlines flowing over minimal, pattering electronic drums. The second one goes further still, a stripped down electronic dub version with distorted voices, bending the original song and its remix into new shapes. 

Give Me A Reason (Weatherall Meets Jonnie Two Heaters Uptown Part 1)

Give Me A Reason (Weatherall Meets Jonnie Two Heaters Uptown Part 2)

Jono found the British winter tough, shivering in his studio space, wrapped up to beat the cold. The Facility 1 landlord brought him a heater but one was not enough. Hence the remix titles. 

Uptown And Back Again

Monday's Uptown post led me to two further Andrew Weatherall remixes with Uptown in the title, this pair from 2016. Australian band Jagwar Ma's second album Every Now And Zen looked to the late 80s and early 90s for its inspiration, Manchester's neo- psychedelia and Screamadelica. They'd moved into studio space in Weatherall's Scrutton Street bunker complex and his influence must have seeped through the walls and open doors. He would remix the song Give Me A Reason twice, the first a slowed down, electronic dub excursion, the dull thud of the drum machine pushing it on for nine minutes. The second is a more abstract, even dubbier work out. A robot voice intones 'and left and right and left and right'. The  drum machine patters on.

Give Me A Reason (Weatherall Meets Jonnie Two Heaters Uptown Part 1)

Give Me A Reason (Weatherall Meets Jonnie Two Heaters Uptown Part 2)

Edit: the space Jagwar Ma's Jono moved into alongside Andrew Weatherall was not the Scrutton Street complex. I am more than happy to be corrected by those who were there.

Give Me A Reason

A couple of years ago Andrew Weatherall remixed Aussie duo Jagwar Ma's Come Save Me, spinning their dance pop into an early 90s indie-dance direction.

Come Save Me (Weatherall Remix)

He's had another go at them this time around, with this ten minute cosmic, synthed out version of Give Me  A Reason complete with robot voices. It's been given the magnificent new title of Weatherall Meets Johnnie Two Heaters Uptown Part 1. Which leads me to speculate that there will also be a Part 2.



And if you can clear your diary for a couple of hours this mix of the man himself playing Leftorium in Brussels in the middle of January should provide some musical thrills and spills.

Sunday's Not For Everyone

Andrew Weatherall has been back on the decks and the mic at NTS radio with the July edition of Music's Not For Everyone- this one includes Jah Wobble, King Tubby, Tommy McCook, Wild Billy Childish, Wire, Vox Low and his new outfit Woodleigh Research Facility. I think you'll enjoy it

Andrew Weatherall Presents: Music's Not For Everyone - 23rd July 2015 by Nts Radio on Mixcloud

This Weatherall remix of Jagwar Ma's Come Save Me from summer 2013 has been running through my head for the last few days. It is a stunner and sounds not unlike the kind of job he might have done to an indie guitar group circa 1991, which would lead to them saying 'there's always been a dance element to our music' on page 19 of the NME.

Come Save Me

As well as the beefy indie-dance Andrew Weatherall remix of Jagwar Ma's Come Save Me single there's this remix by The Pachanga Boys- euphoric is the word. An extended two minute plus intro of ascending keyboard notes followed by ten minutes of hands-in-the-air excess, pitch bending all over the place. Like eating way too much chocolate in one go.

Come Save Me

Jeez. Pass me a drink. That was tough. Now I'm post-wake drunk and on the computer.

This is an outstanding indie-dance remix of Jagwar Ma by Andrew Weatherall, the guitars at around four minutes a particular highlight. Like 1989 all over again. 1989- that was a year wasn't it?