The Mid- Week Special

Three newbie, one off single releases for mid- week to get you pumped up and in the mood for the local elections tomorrow, a soundtrack as you contemplate where to cast your vote. Maybe a more cosmic disco/ psychedelic approach to politics would benefit everybody at this stage in proceedings. It goes without saying that there is nothing remotely cosmic, psychedelic or Balearic about Nigel Farage and Reform and there's a lot to be said for voting with the sole intention of stopping Reform.

Pye Corner Audio tends to deal in dystopic, sci fi techno, acid and murky, subterranean ambient music. It's not all dark and edgy but much of it is. His latest track is very different and parallels the sunshine facing, optimistic sound of his forthcoming album (with Andy Bell's guitar on board), an album with track titles including My Shimmer, Euphoria, Rays Of Sunshine and Greet The Dawn. 

New track The Cool Breeze At Sunset came out on 1st May, an appropriately May Day sounding Balearic/ kosmische five minutes of music with percussive taps, wafty synths, some Mediterranean piano and whispery, almost jazzy 80s chord progressions. 

The Cool Breeze At Sunset is at Bandcamp, free or pay what you want. 

Brighton producer/ DJ Gordon Kaye follows his Galactic Ride single from last year with a new one, Garbage In Garbage Out. Uptempo cosmic disco with some lovely disco- birdsong screeches, a wobbly acid bassline and Gordon's daughter Gabriella singing. Nine minutes of heavenly, brightly lit psychedelic acid house. 

Garbage In Garbage Out is at Bandcamp. 

Jesse Fahnestock's music is always a pleasure, as part of Jezebell and on his own as 10:40. The latest 10:40 track is a one off edit, Winner. It kicks off with some very 10:40 synth sounds and a chunky drumbeat and then a familiar acoustic guitar riff, early 90s stoner folk/ hip hop mangled into new places. Get crazy with the Cheez Whiz. Soy un perdedor.

Get Winner at Bandcamp, free/ pay what you want. 

Ariadne is the name of a locomotive at Manchester Museum of Science and Industry, displayed in the newly re- opened Power Hall. Ariadne was constructed in the British Rail works in Gorton in 1954 and hauled carriages between Manchester and Sheffield until 1977 when the line closed and Ariadne was sold to the State Railways in The Netherlands (which is where this livery and eye catching double arrow logo are from). 

In Greek mythology Ariadne was the daughter of King Minos and Pasiphae. She helped Theseus escape from the labyrinth and the Minotaur by giving him a ball of wool which he used to retrace his steps. Later on Theseus abandoned her. 

Typical. 

Dionysus saw Ariadne sleeping and fell in love with her and they married. She became the mother of eleven children including Oenopion (who personifies wine) and Staphylus (who is associated with grapes). 

I spent some time seeing if I could connect any of this, all sparked by the photo I took in MOSI recently, with the music posted above but apart from some vague ideas about wine, partying, Mediterranean islands and the British and Dutch railway networks capacity for bringing people together I haven't really come up with anything. 

Popper's Theme

Popper's Theme is the latest two track EP from 10:40, the second in the Retro Fit series. The first Retro Fit was inspired by The Stone Roses. This one is built around a sample of the voice of the singer in a  90s guitar band, played backwards. The first version of Popper's Theme is a heavy duty monster, layers of synths and that vocal sample over some chugged up drums. The groove is the thing- all in service of the groove. The second, the Broad Gauge Mix, is faster, more intense, more electronic, spikier and a little lairier. Both are just what January needs to perk things up a bit. You can find Popper's Theme at Bandcamp.

10:40's reworkings of 90s indie/ guitar bands goes back a few years. This is from 2020, a dubbed out version of early Verve, a B-side from the first Verve 12" All In The Mind. Before they became radio friendly everyman balladeers Verve (no The, just Verve) were wild psychonauts venturing deep into sound and space, Nick McCabe's wall of guitars a storm crossing a languid Hendrix with shoegaze, all tone, reverb and feedback with the bass and drums whipping up a storm. On the 10:40 version of Our Way To Fall- One Way To Go (10:40's So High It Hurts Edit)- Jesse re- imagines our Wigan psychedelic mystics as sleepy, bass- led psychedelic dub pioneers. The space rock guitars shimmer and Richard Ashcroft's voice echoes through the haze. It's a like bathing in sound. 

One Way To Go (10:40's So High It Hurts Edit)

From Slough To San Francisco

Out today, remixes of five tracks from Duncan Gray's Five Fathoms Full album which came out last year, a chuggy cosmic disco delight from the heart of Slough. Five Fathoms Further is the hundredth release on Tici Taci which is an achievement in itself. The remixes take Duncan's sound and colour palette as the starting point and head outwards. Meat Katie remix the title track, adding a vicious kick drum, a throbbing bassline and some haste to proceedings. 

Bagging Area favourites Number (an extra- curricular outfit for Red Snapper's Ali Friend and Rich Thair where they get to explore punk- funk/ dark disco) take on Hot Jupe and send it to early 80s New York, the rubber band bassline sounding like it's been listening to ESG and ACR and the sampled voice could straight from an NYC radio station. Lovely post- punk bump and grind.

Jack Butters remixes In The Attic, high calibre machine funk bringing distorto guitar, tabla and fuzz synth bass. Mr BC's version of Greenville heads for the cosmic- disco after party, widescreen, robotic synth action. Finally Justin Drake takes on Shark Bumps, thudding kick drum and rumbling bass suddenly lit up by synths and sparkles. There are excerpts at Soundcloud and the full Five Fathoms Further can be found at Tici Taci. 

Over in San Francisco DJ, musician and producer Cole Odin has launched a new project called Joy Theatre, a label and a production house for the Bay Area. The six track album opens up with an already released piece of music, the seven minute majesty that is Psychemagik's remix of Cole's Dawn's Approaching- blissed out SF cosmische that never stops giving with chuggy drums, angelic vocals, big piano chords. Cole wrote Dawn's Approaching as a tribute to Underworld's Rez and when the synth squiggle appears in the third minute you'll hear why. A welcome re- release. 

There are five further tracks on Joy Theatre. Babylon Black is a dark disco delight from two Bay Area producers, Buna Babillions and Corey Black. Evil Eyes is bass led party music. Jesse Fahnestock is well known round these parts as one half of Jezebell and all of 10:40. In the 90s Jesse lived in San Francisco and DJed at Bulletproof, an influence on Cole. Jesse appears on Joy Theatre under his own name, Jesse Black Fahnestock, with a track called Quienes Son, eight minutes of dub- disco with snakey horns working their way in and some of Jesse' signature production sounds. 

Over on side two there are more Bay Area tracks and artists- D- Freq by Sweetdique starts out like the theme from an 80s teen movie but when things have gone very dark indeed and then turns into a deep, slo mo joyride. The Arturian gives up Break Free, shimmering cosmic sounds with thudding drums and bass, flashes of synth blazing across the skies. Finally Jamel Lee closes the album with I Remember The Sun- the sound of children playing, deep house drums, synth chords always looking upwards and a spoken word vocal about the sunlight. 

Vinyl available here. 

European Tour

I'm off on a school trip today, away for the next six days with six colleagues and fifty five teenagers, on a three country tour of Europe. We're getting the ferry from Hull later today, a night crossing to Rotterdam and then we're in Amsterdam until Monday. Our itinerary includes the Anne Frank house, the Herzongenbusch concentration camp near Vught, a canal cruise and some time in Amsterdam. From there we head to Ypres and the First World War battlefields and cemeteries, the Menin Gate, the Flanders Field Museum, Passchendaele and some chocolate shops. We're also crossing into France to go the Somme. It's a trip I've done before and well worth it, an unforgettable experience for our young people and a good way to finish the school year. Weather forecast is good- too good maybe. I really hope the coach air con is working.

Here's some music from our first destination, the Netherlands. Speedy J is a Dutch producer from Rotterdam whose Ginger and G- Spot albums, both on Warp in the mid-- 90s, were superb spacey, trancey Dutch techno. Pepper was on Ginger.

Pepper

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a review of the new Jezebell album, Jezebalearic Beats Volume 2, a twenty track journey through Darren and Jesse's worlds starting with the slow mo, wigged out Serge Gainsbourg languor of Movimento Lento and then taking in various Jezebell remixes- Andys y Xavi, Pandit Pam Pam, Perry Granville, Pete Bones, Warriors Of The Dystotheque with Joe Duggan and Ian Vale.

As well as those tracks there are some previously released Jezebell hits- The Knack, Concurrence, Trading Places 6am, (Dancing) Not Fighting- and several brand new ones that build to the finale, an epic slice of dancefloor optimism with Yoko Ono in the mix. This is a reminder that you're going to want this album and that you'll end up playing it a lot. Get it here. 

It Says Yes

Jezebell's album Jezebellearic Beats Vol. 1 was one of 2023's highlights, an irreverent, illicit, dancefloor oriented twenty track adventure, Darren and Jesse freewheeling through their record collections and making new music from old, a collection of edits, remixes and their own productions that took in Alfredo, Talking Heads, Max Berlins, Julian Cope and D:Ream among others but was also very much its own thing- Jezebell. Apart from anything else, it was all huge fun.  

Now they're back with Jezebellearic Beats Vol. 2, released on 11th July. There's a new track at Bandcamp, Geo Metric a taster of what's to come. Geo Metric is a low slung, sleazy delight, throbbing with nightlife and basement parties- when the drums kick in at one minute thirty it spins. Like of much of the rest of Jezebellearic Beats Vol. 2, Geo Metric is long, over seven minutes, the track given space and time to unwind, the rhythms twisting round and round, bumping and grinding. 

Just as on Vol. 1, Vol. 2 has twenty tracks. Some of them have been released before- if you've followed Jezebell you'll already know their remix of Warriors Of The Dystotheque's Fitzroy Avenue, Joe Duggan's Northern Irish accent spun out over Jezebell's electronics. You'll have heard their beautifully cosmic remixes of Pandit Pam Pam and Andrys y Xavi, appearing on Vol 2. back to back and sounding like they were made for each other. There's new version of Dancing (Not Fighting), a riotous slice of electronic music sampling Mick Jones screaming at bouncers live on stage with The Clash from Rude Boy and my favourite track from the Trading Places EP is present too, Siouxsie showing up at 6PM with the jeepers creepers. Some of the tracks are their own work- Hung and Donkey from their double entendre Cream Tease EP, Autostrada from the sleek krauty beats of the Weekend Machines EP along with their 2023 single The Knack plus their remixes of Perry Granville and Pete Bones. 

There are new tracks too. As well as Geo Metric there is Japaneasy, a track with found sounds from Japan sitting inside its bullet train groove, percussion rattling and synths jabbing, all forward momentum. Red Black And Green is a slower take on the Jezebell sound and lit up by a stuttering synth sound, a synth doing an impression of a guitar, whoops in the background, electro and acid house bunking up. Perfect Din is built around some vocal samples, the hiss of the hi hat and a gnarly acid squiggle, the voices layered and looped- eventually jazz/ funk drums burst in and we're into new territory, Jezebellearic Afrobeat. 

Jezebell have taken their sound out to crowds since Vol. 1 came out- they've played at The Social in London, at  Pikes in Ibiza and at The Golden Lion in Todmorden. Jesse and Darren are musical sponges, soaking it all up and using it make new music and their own sound. Vol. 2 is twenty tracks long and most of the tracks are pretty long. It's a big piece of work. It can be taken track by track but works really well as a whole- one of the things about listening to Vol. 2 in on sitting is how well it does all work together, how their remixes, edits and own music has built into one coherent body of sound- insistent rhythms, nagging synth sounds, plenty of percussion, a sampledelic delight. 

Where Vol. 2 really excels though is at the beginning and the end,  a pair of tracks that bookend the album and sound like future Jezebell classics. The first, the album's opener, is Movimento Lento, a slow motion way into the Jezebell world, a sleazy drum track that feels like it's come from Serge Gainsbourg's apartment, the faint lick of wah wah guitar, a sleepy vocal sample, 'this is the greatest gift you're giving to yourself', and then some Beastie Boys, the stoned backing vocal refrain from 1992's Something's Got To Give... and heading back to that song via it's video, stealth bombers taking off and B- 52's dropping bombs on Vietnam, it does seem like we're stuck in a never ending loop. Movimento Lento is, as the kids say, a vibe.

Nineteen tracks later and Jezebellearic Beats Vol. 2 finishes with Turn It Yes. Electronic drums blip in and a echo laden voice emerges, 'language has the power to alter our perceptions...' The synths ripple, the sequencers sync and, 'the word is yes'. Uptempo and unashamedly optimistic, the topline wriggles around messing with the synapses, the drums kick on and then Yoko Ono appears, talking about her conceptual artwork from The Indica Gallery in 1966, a ceiling painting, a ladder, a magnifying glass and a single word... Yes. It was famously an exhibition attended by John Lennon. he climbed the ladder and found the word and the pair were introduced as a result of that. Turn It Yes is all of that and more, the synths building like chiming indie- dance guitars, the drums kicking on and on and the two voices coming together, everything gliding on for the final few minutes before coming to an end, and again, that word... Yes. 

Pre- order Jezebellearic Beats Vol. 2 here. You'd be daft not to- it's going to be a big part of the soundtrack to summer 2025. 

An Alternative Resurrection

A day late for an Easter Sunday resurrection but bank holiday Monday feels more appropriate- you might remember that in January 2024 I wrote a piece about an imagined alternative future for The Stone Roses, one where after the release of One Love in June 1990 they didn't blow it. You can re- read An Alternate History first if you want to. It was a post that seemed to download itself into my mind while out on a bike ride, a fully formed version of the 1990s where Ian, John, Mani and Reni had better advice, clearer heads and didn't get immediately bogged down in a post- Spike Island slump and court case, a world where they moved on, signed to Heavenly and released a series of singles and EPs, side stepping the drama and overbearing weight of delivering a second album. In my alternate history they end up at the millennium, back where they started in Sale, south Manchester, with an album that delivered on the promise the band had in that space between the release of Elephant Stone in October 1988 and then One Love/ Something's Burning in 1990. 

Elephant Stone

One of the spin offs from the post took place in Stockholm, Sweden. Scandinavia is a place rich in Roses lore. The band toured there in 1987, a bonding trip for the group and then they returned in 1990 for some warm up shows before the big definitive, generational statements at Spike Island and Glasgow Green. There was a memorable article in Q Magazine by Adrian Deevoy who took a trip with the band in their 1990 pomp, playing gigs, imbibing substances and dancing like fish (all doubled down on by United winning the European Cup Winner's Cup in Rotterdam as the interview and tour took place). 

The 2024 Stockholm spin off was from Jesse, the man behind 10:40, who read my post and was inspired to write a new/ lost Stone Roses track, titled An Alternative History. He sent it to me in the middle of last year and for a while there was a plan that I might sing on it but that came to naught (due to me it has to be said). Jesse released his three track EP yesterday, an Easter Sunday resurrection and also his birthday, three versions of his Stone Roses alternative history, under the banner 10:40 presents Retro Fit.

The original version is a five minute song that sounds like John Squire's next step in 1989, a song they band never quite finished perhaps- chorus pedal and chiming guitar, Reni's kick drum and snare and a very familiar voice coming through the line, straight outta Chorlton singing 'She's waiting...'. 

The lead version of the song on the EP is An Alternate History (Retro Fit Resurrection), an eight minute dance mix that spirals through time and space, landing back in the heady days of 89/ 90, the permanent summer of our youth- fringes, love beads, flares, long sleeved t- shirts, nights lost at the indie disco, clubbing and guitar bands clashing on the floor under the strobe light, maracas and wide eyed joy, Jesse's chiming guitar lines and 1990 shuffle lighting up the room... Ian's there, sucking in his cheeks and doing that loose limbed dance, 'There's a time and a place for everything/ I've got to get it through'....

Lavender Mist completes the EP, Squire's love of Jackson Pollock at the fore, evident on the sleeves of all those records and the titles of Roses B-sides Full Fathom Five and Guernica.

Lavender Mist is not just the Pollock Roses but the experimental, backwards tapes Roses too, a backwards effects version of An Alternative History to follow Don't Stop, Simone, Guernica and Full Fathom Five; a heavenly, spun out and blissed out version of the song with loops and echoes, Ian's voice spun backwards and the guitars reversed, the rhythms both forwards and backwards, everything a great, trippy whirl. Isn't it funny how you shine?

10:40 presents retro Fit: An Alternative History is here. Go get it, you'll love it. Tell Jesse I said hello. 

Forty Five Minutes Of The Beta Band

The Beta Band's reformation to play some gigs in the autumn and maybe make some new music is one of 2025's most cheering stories (in a year not exactly over- burdened with cheering stories admittedly). Sometimes people say that The Beat Band 'should have been massive' but it's a comment that makes me scratch my head and think 'in what world?'. 

It's difficult to imagine a world in which songs, the sheer number of ideas, the weight of experimentalism and out there nature of what they were trying to do, crossing over into the world of millions of albums sold and stadium gigs. Steve Mason, John MacLean, Robin Jones and Gordon Anderson and later bassist Richard Greentree were not making music for the masses- and they seemed ill equipped to deal with that anyway. Besides, somethings are best kept n a smaller scale. 

The Three EPs overshadowed everything they did subsequently, all three albums that followed felt like they failed to meet the expectations the Three EPs placed on them. Listened to now, they seem less burdened by that weight and there's a lot worth listening to in The Beta Band (1999), Hot Shots II (2001) and Heroes To Zeroes (2004). 

Forty Five Minutes Of The Beta Band

• Push It Out
• Dry The Rain
• Eclipse
• Assessment
• Inner Meets Me (10:40's Outer Hebrides Dub)
• The Cow's Wrong
• The Hard One (Manmousse Remix)
• Simple 
• Dr. Baker

Push It Out is the opening track on 1998's Los Amigos Del Beta Bandidos, the third of the three EPs that announced them as the late 90s flagbearers for genre busting low fi, experimental indie. Is indie the right word? It seems too small for The Beta Band. Attempting to dissect or explain what makes Push It Out and the other songs from the three EPs is pointless. You just have to listen to them and feel them. The pots and pans percussion, dub basslines, acoustic guitars, samples and space/ atmosphere is solely their own. Steve Mason's vocals- double tracked, doleful, oblique, melancholic- sound more and more like a man trying to work his way through the depths of depression. Dr. Baker is stunning, a song that tells the story of the titular figure, a man whose 'dog was dead and wife was dead/ misery planned inside his head', a song with Mason singing the line 'see me lost inside' over and over, that sounds like a long dark night of the soul and yet somehow makes it all seem OK. Genius. Not a word I use lightly. 

Dry The Rain I wrote about recently. If it's what they end up being remembered for, it's probably more than enough. 

Eclipse is from 2001's Hot Shots II, a song about questions. The album was a complete piece of work, minimal hip hop beats and their experimental sound refined with the help of producer Colin C- Swing Emmanuel. 

Assessment opened their third and final album Heroes To Zeroes, self produced and then mixed by Nigel Godrich. Over blistering ringing electric guitars Steve Mason sings 'I think I cracked my skull on the way down/ I think I lost my head when I lay down' and everything goes leftwards from there. The crunchy guitar breakdown in the middle is exhilarating and the pile on of instruments at the end, trumpets joining in, is a rush. Simple is also from Heores To Zeros, more lovely, expansive experimental indie with another lost and broken lyric from Mason- 'I tired to do my own thing/ But the problem with your own thing/ Is you end up on your own'. 

Their albums are all overshadowed by The Three EPs but there's gold in all of the three proper albums and this is one of the pieces of gold. And the video is unbelievable. No- one else was doing this sort of thing or doing it so effortlessly (it cost them the band though- they split owing the record company one million  quid, partly the result of making expensive arty videos).

Inner Meet Me is from the second EP, The Patty Patty Sound. Jesse Fahnestock's 10:40 Dub is exactly what it says it is. Jesse's a big fan and I think you can hear it in a lot of his work. This edit originally came out on Paisley Dark in May 2021. 

The Cow's Wrong is from their self- titled 1999 debut album, an album they legendarily slagged off to the music press. 'It's fucking awful', they told the NME, 'one of the worst records that'll come out this year'. Experimental pop, ambient drone, excursions into trip hop and cosmic balladry crossed with folky psychedelia and late 90s indie together with the mass of acclaim for The Three EPs  took its toll on its makers. It's better than its creators had us believe at the time but its also dense and abstract, a complex and ambitious album. They also got into legal trouble with Bonnie Tyler and Jim Steinman on The Hard One. The Cow's Wrong and The Hard One are both from The Beta Band (The Hard One Manmousse Remix came out as an extra track on an extra disc, an ambient- abstract hip hop version of the song). They were following their noses and taking risks and that's what artists should do. 

Monday's Long Song

Sticking with my Jezebell themed weekend, by happy coincidence one of Jesse from Jezebell's other projects released a new song last Friday and it's quite unlike anything else he's done before- and unlike most other people too. Electric Blue Vision are Jesse and Emilia Harmony and have a couple of releases behind them. This new song- Folklore Rising- is nine minutes long, a song in two acts. The first part is all Medieval folk, Emilia's voice wafting above music from the 14th century, a folk song from before the modern world existed, lute and weird percussion, pastoral sounds. The second half judders into another gear, suddenly transplanting Jesse, Emelia and us into a techno future, a world where Detroit joins the madrigal party. The piano runs at eight minutes are a particular joy. Get it here free or name your own price. 

Forty Minutes Of Jezebell

A Jezebell mix for this Sunday to go with their weekend takeover at The Golden Lion in Todmorden with the emphasis on dancing. Jesse and Darren's music, edits and remixes have been one of post- 2021's joys starting with Thrill Me in November 2021, taking in various EPs and singles, an album and most recently Cream Tease (wordplay and sexual innuendo are a Jezebell speciality. Personally, I'm not a fan of innuendo- if I see one in my writing I whip it out, straight away*). 

Forty Minutes Of Jezebell

• Bibbles (Pots And Pans Mix)
• Re- birth
• Perfect Din
• Citric
• We All Need (Jezebell's Ghost Train Mix)
• The Jezebell Spirit
• Darren's Theme

Bibbles is by Brighton Balearica duo Andres Y Xavi, a single on Higher Ground in February 2024. Jezebell did three remixes, the Pots And Pans Mix being my favourite, all manner of whirrs and clicks and abstract rhythm sounds.

Re- birth first saw the light of day on the Diavol edit label and then on Jezebellearic Beats Vol. 1, a shimmering, shuffling, woozy piece of edit work. 

Perfect Din is from Shelter Me, a compilation released in April 2024 to raise funds for Crisis, a homelessness charity. 

Citirc was one of four tracks released as the Weekend Machines EP, machine funk for cyborgs to strut their stuff to. Hand claps, hi hats, guitar riffs, synths, all synced up for endless, beautiful repetition.

We All Need is one of the songs on A Certain Ratio's It All Comes Down To This album, one of 2024's best records. Jezebell's Ghost Train Mix came about when ACR's Martin Moscrop was record shopping in Berlin and found and bought a copy of Jezebellearic Beats Vol. 1. 

The Jezebell Spirit takes one of the key tracks from David Byrne and Brian Eno's groundbreaking 1981 album My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts and Jezebells it, the 808 cracking away under the sampled American TV preacher. My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts is a seminal album, a record streets ahead of almost everyone else in the early 80s. 

Darren's Theme is from Cream Tease, a track and EP with its tongue firmly in its cheek and possibly its trousers undone as well. A snatch of vocal from Karen Finley's Tales Of Taboo, a 1986 song with a lyric that could be described as sexually explicit. 

* Thanks are due to Kenneth Williams for this joke obviously

Over At Ban Ban Ton Ton And At The Golden Lion

I've been reviewing records over at Ban Ban Ton Ton again, Dr Rob's Japan based Balearic and electronic music one stop, most recently on Monday of this week when the newest Coyote mini- album came out. Coyote (Timm and Ampo) have been in a rich vein of form in the last few years, releasing a slew of 12" singles, albums, six track mini- albums, edits and remixes. In May there's the prospect of a collaboration EP with Peaking Lights, a 12" called Love Letters on their own Is This Balearic ? label. In the meantime, hot on the heels of last year's six track mini- album Hurry Up And Live, comes Wailing At The Yellow Dawn- a record which evokes all sorts of things but mainly for me music as a soundtrack to dreaming. My review at Ban Ban Ton Ton is here. 

A week before that I reviewed an album by Thought Leadership, an album called Ill Of Pentacles that is about to get a vinyl release on Be With Records. I knew it was familiar and realised while listening to it that my friend Spencer sent me a link to it last year when it was released as digital and on cassette- getting re- acquainted with it second time around was even better. Thought Leadership is a mysterious musician living in Edgeley, Stockport armed with nothing  more than a guitar, some FX pedals, a drum machine and a home studio. The music, ten tracks of it, is entirely instrumental, FX affected pieces of guitar music with occasional drum machine backing. It's a wonderful album, still available at Bandcamp. The most obvious comparison in sound is Vini Reilly but other post- punk and indie guitarists are in there too- John McGeoch, Robin Guthrie, Johnny Marr and Maurice Deebank of Felt. My full review is here. There's a second album too, Ace Of Swords which was recorded in the middle of last year, at Bandcamp. 

It put me in mind of another Mancunian guitarist whose music I reviewed for Ban Ban Ton Ton, a pair of  re- releases from the early 80s by Kevin McCormick together with a new one called Passing Clouds. I wrote about Passing Clouds last October and I didn't share it but you can find it here. This is It's Been A Long Time...

Meanwhile, over in Todmorden at The Golden Lion Jezebell have a weekend takeover, a line up of DJs, musicians and chancers playing on Saturday and Sunday. The DJs are Darren and Jesse (from Jezebell), Jamie Tolley, Martin Moscrop from ACR, Nessa Johnston, Stuart Alexander, Kim Lana, Adam Roberts and FC Kahuna. The musician playing live is OBOST (Bobby Langfield). The chancer is me. I'm on at 4pm on Sunday afternoon, playing after Jesse's afternoon set. 

Both days should be great fun, the Sunday session maybe a bit more chilled than the Saturday, it's free all weekend and it'll be great to finally meet Jesse and Darren after featuring so much of their music here since 2021 and only ever chatting online. 

Out a couple of weeks on Berlin's Nein Records is an EP by Parvale (Ian Vale and Neil Parnell) with the track Breaker City complete with Jezebell's Nice And Slow Remix, a cut 'n' paste, jerky breakbeat anthem for dancefloor action. The EP is here. 

Powder Waxing

10:40 released an EP back in 2023 as Powder Wax Vol. 1, a dancefloor oriented track called Little Black Dress with vocals by S.A.A.R.A. There were three mixes. The Undressed Dub bent the original most out of shape with rattling drums, juddering synths and acres of space. Eventually the four four drums kicked in and a fragment of vocal remained among the swirls of FX.

Little Black Dress (Undressed Dub)

Now there's a follow up, Powder Wax Vol 2, two more tracks aimed at the floor and the lights, no nonsense, four four fun. Actually, lots of fun and nonsense is likely to be ignited by this pair of tracks. Beneath The Waves is quality machine funk, squelchy synth sounds, some 80s sci- fi chord changes, a snippet of voice that's been chopped up and the feeling that this could go on and on.... Second track Miracle Me comes in on thumping drums, bending synth sounds, stepped chords and a snare kicking away. There's more vocal on this one, 'I need you/ Deep inside', sung soulfully and housed up, while the synths and FX get wiggier. I could see this one filling floors and raising hands. 

Which handily, we'll get the chance to find out in person when Jesse and Darren bring their Jezebell takeover to The Golden Lion next month, on the 15th and 16th March. Me and Martin are taking part on the Sunday, playing tunes alongside Jesse and Darren, Adam Roberts, Kim Lana and FC Kahuna. The previous day/ night has a line up consisting of OBOST playing live and DJ sets from Stuart Alexander, Nessa Johnson, Martin Moscrop from ACR, Jamie Tolley and Jezebell finishing things off. It should be a lot of fun. 

Powder Wax Vol. 2 is out today and it should be available here. 

Monday's Long Song

Some time ago it was established that a song had to be six minutes and forty nine seconds long to qualify for a Monday long song slot. I can't remember who established this or why but it makes sense and I'm happy to go with it. Your Fault by Raxon is six minutes and forty eight seconds long and that one single second is not enough to keep it out of today's posting. One second matters not.

The emotional heft of this piece of off kilter dance music, four four drums and synths that glide and wander all over the place, is something that has to be felt. Click play and let it hit. I hadn't heard it until recently. It's as good as anything you'll hear today. Jesse wrote about it at his Facebook page and linked it to wonky chocolate and said 'It's euphoric, groovy, and loaded with attack; but mostly it's just *wrong* in exactly the right ways', and as he always is, he's right. He added this...

'As someone who produces music in a roughly similar style, I feel like I should be able to explain what's going on here, but I'm not sure I can. On a simple level, the basic volume of the track and subtle loudness of the elements are all over the place; more mysteriously, it seems sort of un-mixed, with elements operating on separate planes and in randomly shifting keys, whooshing around each other like electrons jumping between shells, constantly changing perspectives on the same fractured image. I think the best comparison isn't music at all: "Your Fault" *sounds* like a cubist painting looks. It's a Picasso for 2024'.

I'm so up for music being compared to Cubism. Picasso for 2024 is so up my street I don't know what to add. You can and should buy it here. 

Cream Tease

What does Wednesday bring? It brings four slices of X rated, road tested, dance floor bangers from Jezebell, Jesse and Darren blurring the boundaries of edit/ remix/ new music and in single entendre mode. Cream Tease opens with Hung and ends with Donkey with The Big Time and Darren's Theme sandwiched in between. Hung is slo mo and crunchy, a grinder. There are voices chanting half way through, flickers of call and response. The Big Time kicks on, faster and harder, streamlined and in full flow, Visage taken for a whirl around the floor, pulses raised with an arena level breakdown and power chords, spinning so fast now we're barely in control. 

Darren's Theme is more basic, a reducer- late 80s jack rhythms, a siren, and a snatch of vocal from Karen Finley's Tales Of Taboo, snarling 'oh let me suck your...'. Later on the reply comes. Karen Finley's Tales Of Taboo is so X rated that even listening to it in the car on your own, you feel like you should be apologising to somebody for what they can hear. Just a two second sample from it carries the same illicit surge. 

Tales Of Taboo (Radio Mix)

Don't let the part in brackets fool you. That isn't a daytime radio friendly version. 

Cream Tease finishes itself off with Donkey, an edit/ mashed up version of Don Quichotte, high camp/ Europop 1984 single by French outfit Magazine 60, the vocals flipping between French and English, Jesse and Darren demonstrating there are no stones they will leave unturned in their endless search for the goods. Get your Cream Tease at Bandcamp. 

Fifty Minutes Of 10:40

I first heard the music of 10:40 three years ago when 10:40 (Jesse Fahnestock) shared his edit/ dub of Spacemen 3's How Does It Feel? in a few groups I'm a member of.

How Does It Feel? (10: 40's Terrace Moonshine Dub)

Jesse takes an already somnolent/ tripped out Pete Kember and co and filters him through a dub filter, everything stretched out and reverberating slowly. 

From there I dug into the 10:40 back catalogue and found a treasure trove of edits, dubs, original music, remixes, Balearic shufflers, chuggers, bangers and a lot of slow, repetitive psychedelia. Jesse's big influences- Andrew Weatherall, Hardkiss, Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized- all made use of repetition and the long groove. After a while Jesse got in touch and stated sharing tracks with me, both as 10: 40 and his partnership with Darren Bell as Jezebell. At the start of 2023 10:40 released Transition Theory, an album that is a full conceived piece of work, each track flowing beautifully into the next one. Jesse was one of the people we approached to be on Sounds From the Flightpath Estate Volume 1, a relative unknown next to some big hitters- David Holmes, Justin Robertson, Sean Johnstone, an unreleased Weatherall and Tenniswood track for crying out loud!- and his track Three Rings stands along side any of the others on the album. 

I thought it was time for a Sunday 10:40 mix. Once I started going through my folders and realised how much music Jesse has made my head swam a bit- so much music, what to include? In the end I went for a mix of slow and low, dubby electronic psychedelia, a world where it's permanently twenty to eleven. Maybe the bangers need a mix of their own. This was a tricky one to do in some ways and the tempo speeds up and slows down which maybe I should have fixed and shifted the sequence around to make it flow more evenly. And yes, that Spacemen 3 edit should really have been on it too.

10: 40's Bandcamp is here. 

Fifty Minutes Of 10: 40

• One Way To Go (10: 40's So High It Hurts Edit)
• Green Shoots
• Neighbors Dub
• Left Behind Blues
• Sea Quenched
• Kissed Again
• Iz Um
• Hey You (10: 40 Remix)
• Tumbling Down

One Way To Go was on the B-side of the first 12" Verve released, back in 1992 when the Wigan psychonauts were four young, straggly haired, psychedelic/ shoegaze noise explorers, a genuinely brilliant live band and hadn't yet been forced to add The to their name or become balladeers. All In The Mind was a calling card, a gauntlet thrown down. Jesse does a full on dubbed out treatment. I suggested to him once that he should remix and dub the entire early Verve back catalogue. I think he thought I was joking.

Last December Jesse re- presented the entire 10:40 back catalogue as an advent calendar, putting everything out there one more time before deleting it. Green Shoots was the behind 5th door, Neighbors Dub was 8th December's door, Sea Quenched the 18th, Iz Um was the 19th, and Left Behind Blues the 21st.

Kissed Again is an absolute beauty, the lead track on a three track EP that came out on Brighton's Higher Love label, the home of some truly wonderful modern Balearica. In September 2021 I described Kissed Again as ' a blissed out glide- by track from Jesse Fahnestock's 10:40 alias, an eight minute trip, with gently rising and falling synths, bubbling sounds, rolling piano chords, some acid squiggles and a sense of reaching an ending that'll leave you either grinning or slightly dewy eyed. Maybe both'. I'm sticking with that. 

Hey You is a cover  of 14 Iced Bears song Hey Fever by Puerto Montt City Orchestra with original singer Rob Sekula recording new vocals for the song. Jesse goes all Spiritualized, nearly eight minutes of trippy psychedelia.

Tumbling Down is the opener from Transition Theory and really, once you've let this mix paly through and ended on Tumbling Down you should cue up the album and go straight on through. 

Friday/ Saturday Bandcamp Bonanza

Bandcamp Friday yesterday dropped a ton of new music into my Inbox and while today is a day late in terms of the benefits the artists get from the monthly Bandcamp Friday (Bandcamp waive their fees for one day a month) it's still worth posting some of the highlights- and yesterday was packed full of highlights.

We'll start with a 10: 40 remix of Puerto Montt City orchestra, a song called Hey You, out on Brighton's Higher Love label. By his own admission Jesse's work as 10: 40 has been an ongoing mission to make music/ remixes that channel Spiritualized and this one takes that to the nth degree- cue up Jason Spaceman's Lay Back In The Sun either before or after this and enjoy the sun drenched, blissed out ride....

                                                 

The song is a cover of 14 Iced Bears' Hay Fever, an 80s indie classic. You can get buy the 10: 40 remix of Puerto Montt City Orchestra at Bandcamp.

Next, another murky, underground, radiophonic, analogue synth missive from Pye Corner Audio, the first one for a few months, this one titled Texture Reels. Four minutes and forty five seconds of subterranean, kosmische reel to reel intensity. Get it at Bandcamp, pay what you want. 

Thirdly, Emma. Matty Ducasse records as Skylab. His Skylab International offshoot released a new single onto Bandcamp yesterday, a cover of Hot Chocolate's Emma. Mat plays and produces, Zoe Filthy- Rich songs. The drum machine pitter patters, chunky machine rhythms. The synths ping and blip. Hot Chocolate's mid- 70s pop- soul hit is darker than you might think. Producer Mickie Most asked singer Errol Brown for 'darkness and depth'. Errol gave him lyrics about lost childhood and suicide, a film star 'who can't keep living on dreams no more'. Mat and Zoe dredge up all of the pain and darkness that Errol piled into his lyrics. The EP is at Bandcamp, remix, edit and instrumental.

Lastly, Richard Norris whose Oracle Sound dub project has become essential listening. Richard has recorded three albums of dubs, available digitally and on vinyl via his subscription service. Recently he hosted his friend Jon Carter, who DJed at the Heavenly Social in the 90s and recorded as Monkey Mafia as well as under his own name. Richard wanted to show Jon some new kit. They ended up making a dub track called Ceefax- rocking drums and bass, space echo, melodica and an Ampp Freq live dub machine. The results come in three parts- Ceefax, a Norris dub and a Carter dub. All three are at Bandcamp. As I keep typing. 

You can buy all the music above for less than the price of a pint of lager in central London (and some central Manchester pubs). And while the lager may look briefly colder and more enticing, the music will last longer. 

Pass A Wish And Take Me To The House

Out today on Brighton's always reliable Higher Love label is one of my favourite EPs of the summer, Pandit Pam Pam's Pass A Wish with a pair of Jezebell remixes. Pandit Pam Pam is an electronic musician from Sao Paulo whose album Camburi came out in July (and featured some guest spots from Henry Olsen, formerly the bass player for Primal Scream in their late 80s/ early 90s pomp and before that part of Nico's touring band in the 80s). I wrote about Camburi here. Eduardo, one of the two men behind Pandit Pam Pam also puts music out on his Boston Medical Group label and has sent me music from time to time, including releases by Feriasdasferias. On Pass A Wish Eduardo in Sao Paulo gets remixed by my favourite remix/ edit pair Jezebell, Jesse (in Stockholm) and Darren (in London). 

Pass A Wish is a dreamy, floaty four minutes of music, built around a fluttering rhythm and with horns hinting at its Brazilian origins and surroundings. The synths bubble away and a female voice drifts on top, somewhere between singing and talking. It nods in the direction of A Man Called Adam's 1990/ 1991 sound- yep, that good. 

The pair of Jezebell remixes both transport Pass A Wish elsewhere. Jezebell's 50 Ways Remix presumably tips its hat at Paul Simon's 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover (whose drum break has been sampled widely, not least by one Andrew Weatherall on his head spinning remix of Love Corporation's Give Me Some Love). The drums give it a funky, constant motion while the synths and voice swirl around the rhythm and the chopped up horn drops in and out. Very cool indeed. 

Jezebell's Leave Your Lover Mix is sleek and chuggy, a different rhythm and feel, more night time with handclaps and percussion leading the charge, the horn chopped up and FXed even more, everything pushed a little further into the cosmos. The Pass A Wish EP is available at Bandcamp from today. You know what to do. 

Also out today is the latest release from teenage wonderkid OBOST. Take Me To The House was one of the standouts on OBOST's debut album (released at the start of this year), a shimmering, multi- coloured slice of electronic euphoria, rising and falling synths and four four drums. On the new EP the original is reworked into Take Me To The Basement, a slowed down version with a juddering rhythm and fizzing synths. 

There's a remix too by Tronik Youth, a much beatier, more percussive version, with a no nonsense kick drum, pulsing synthlines and heading straight to the heart of the dancefloor. The EP is out today and again, available at Bandcamp. 

More Weekend Machines

At the end of May Jezebell released a track on The Ransom Note, the single minded dancefloor action of Weekend Machines. For much of the last eighteen months Jesse and Darren have created a Balearic soundtrack- their album Jezeballearic Beats Volume 1 borrowed the original Balearic Beats album's cover art, they sampled at length a monologue by legendary Ibiza DJ Alfredo, they pulled together samples and edits and rebuilt songs by Talking Heads, Siouxsie Sioux and Kajagoogoo, they purloined the 1988 Balearic classic Jibaro and Belgian underground classic from 1987 Max Berlin's' Elle Et Moi and on Jezeblue and Trading Places reimagined the Mediterranean sounds for 2023 into 2024. All this and more. A Balearic masterclass. 

They're now edging away from this, away from the poolside and beach and towards the darkness of the strobe lit basement, music with the sole purpose of finding a groove and making people dance. The EP's lead and title track, Weekend Machines, has one of those acid 303 basslines that you could happily allow to play forever, providing some bottom end to everything you do. On top, the synths and arpeggios dance around. Beneath, the drum machine power on. The vocal samples, distorted robotic voices, tell of the coming of the machines. Enough already, as they say- just get on the floor.

The remaining three tracks on the EP don't let up. Autostrada is a motorik hymn to the Italian motorway system, a futuristic 80s journey from Rome to Milan, drum machine rhythms clocking up the miles on the tarmac, a sample by Italo house pioneers Mr Flagio providing the spark for Jezebell's krauty machine music. Citric is bumpier, a bouncing rhythm and bassline switching the flow from four four to shuffle, with gnarly guitars and synths. The EP finishes with a remix of the title track by Shubostar, cosmic DJ/ producer from South Korea  but currently in Berlin. Her remix slows the pace slightly, drops the pitch and pulls the bass to the fore, and then achieves lift off with sci fi synth chords and bleeps, an 80s space TV soundtrack crossed with underground outer space chug. 

All of which, without wanting to get too '80s TV nostalgia' on you, led to me thinking about Erin Gray as Col. Wilma Deering in Buck Rogers In The 25th Century...

What's up Buck?

You can get the EP at Bandcamp. 

An Hour Of Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown And Downtown

Hardway Bros (Sean Johnston) and Monkton (Duncan Gray) DJ and remix together. In both cases there's something about the partnership that pushes both to do something that's different from what each does on their own. Their remixes as Hardway Bros Meets Monkton reference the seminal Augustus Pablo album King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown and as a result you'd be right to expect lots of dub percolating through the sounds cooked up in the remix studio. Dub, bass, echo, melodica- all are present. So is plenty of glorious chug and the wide spaces of cosmic disco. Cosmic, psychedelic, dub disco. The remixes also tend to be long, usually going up towards ten minutes, so this mix was always going to be a long one. 

An Hour of Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown And Downtown

• Jack Butters: Shake It Off (Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown Version)
• Electric Blue Vision: Other Skies (Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown Version)
• Perry Granville: Sailing Ships (Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown Version)
• Fjordfunk: It's All Black (Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown)
• GLOK: That Time Of Night (Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown Dub)
• Psychederek: Screamadereka (Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown Downtown Remix)
• Phil Kieran and Green Velvet: Enjoy The Day (Hardway Meets Monkton Downtown Remix)

Jack Butters is from Stoke- on- Trent, a city fmaous for consisting of five towns, its historic past as the centre of pottery and ceramics, and for it's football team Stoke City (the old ground, the Victoria Ground, was a fairly fearsome awayday in the past). What Stoke should be famous for now is Jack's music, not least this dubbed out Hardway and Monkton remix. I heard this played by Sean at ALFOS at The Golden Lion last summer and it sounded immense.

Electric Blue Vision is Jesse Fahnestock of 10:40 and Jezebell with singer Emilia Harmony. Other Skies came out last November, a 2023 highlight with three great remixes- this one plus remixes by Tambores En Benirras and Balearic Ultras. Sean and Duncan's remix is more majestic melodica led dub, a complete reconstruction of Jesse and Emilia's song.

Perry Granville's Sailing Ships becomes a metallic- dub- by- way- of- post punk- and- acid house trip in the Hardway Bros and Monkton hands, noises rattling round and ricocheting as the bass pushes on and thunder rumbles. There are stuttering vocal sample and pulverising synths, drop outs and re- entries and always underpinning everything, huge, live sounding bass. 

Fjordfunk released It's All Back in 2020 on the Tici Taci label, an eleven minute cosmic disco tune remixed into an eleven minute cosmische dub disco tune by Hardway and Monkton with a squealing guitar line dropping in and out and an ultra- distorted voice saying things that are impossible to make out. 

GLOK is Ride's Andy Bell. Since 2019 Andy's released several albums and singles as GLOK, experimental cosmische/ synth songs and tracks. That Time Of Night was on 2021's Pattern Recognition and features the voice of Shiarra Bell, Andy's wife, talking about the pleasures of being lost on a dancefloor, 'just one person, one part of the whole mass of people.. the heat and the light and the flashing...'. Hardway and Monkton take the track and turn it into a sleek, propulsive, krauty trip, a keening guitar line running through it with a booming, metronomic kick drum.

Psychederek is from Stretford, just up the road from me, and has recently released one of this year's best EPs, Alt!. In August 2021 he released the Space Arcade 12" on Chris Massey's Sprechen label, with the very ace Screamadereka coming in double Hardway Monkton remix form- the Downtown remix and Disco Dub version. The Downtown Remix is a glorious sunlit thing in two halves, the first half dubby psyche and the second a chuggy, pacier, cosmische glide. 

Phil Kieran and Green Velvet's Enjoy The Day came out in late 2022. Phil is a Belfast based DJ and producer. Green Velvet is from Chicago. Enjoy The Day is full on, four four drums and techno bass, chopped up and FXed vocals, 'you got it', and a piano line that is the definition of happy/ sad. 

Weekend Machines

Jezebell have been pushing their way into the Balearic/ acid house world over the last two years, especially so in the last 12 months. Their album Jezebelearic Beats Vol 1. caused a fuss when it came out digitally last summer and again with the vinyl release this spring. The vinyl release has slightly fewer tracks than the digital and runs in a different order, the sequencing of four sides of vinyl an artform in itself. Since my copy of the album arrived it's been semi- resident on my turntable, an opportunity to enjoy the album all over again. From the languid, Ibizan beats of Jezebellaeric (with a voice over from the legendary DJ Alfredo) to the ten minute blissed out feel of Jezeblue, the album is filled with a laid back, coastal feel. It also has plenty of moments where the tempos rise, the beats get thumpier and the feel is more intense, more dance floor oriented- Swamp Shuffle finds Jezebell leading Byrne, Frantz, Harrison and Weymouth for a dizzying spin under the mirror ball. 

Man 2.0's Red Shift, remixed by Darren and Jesse as the Jezebell Inner Child Mix, is an electronic maelstrom. Jezebell's Trading Places (3 PM) is a mid- paced, mid- afternoon warm up, the sound of a few liveners sunk and the head spinning a little. If you're quick there are a handful of copies of the album left at Bandcamp. 

Jezebell have been at it in real life too- Jesse and Darren played a Jezebell DJ set at The Evil Acid Baron's Weekender in Devon last weekend and in June Darren and guests host a Jezebell takeover at The Golden Lion in Todmorden. 

Jezebell have a new track out today, a seven minute banger with the self explanatory title Weekend Machines. Described in their own words as a 'late- night, strobe- lit, smoke- machine, low- ceiling, eyes- closed, spring- loaded, acid house avalanche' Weekend Machines is a hairpin turn away from the beach and poolside sounds in favour of something darker, thumpier, and more direct, an injection of electricity and intensity- four four drums, definitely machine made, wobbling synth sounds, chugging bass that pushes, acid house mayhem, and a distorted voice that wriggles into the ears and the brain, a voice that ends up repeating one word- 'machines'. It's the next step. You can listen to or buy this room- shaker here. 

Trance Stance

Electric Blue Vision released one of late 2023's best EPs, Jesse Fahnestock and Emilia Harmony's genre blurring widescreen Balearic psyche- folk/ indie dance track Other Skies. It came with three remixes that pushed it into other spaces, courtesy of Balearic Ultras, Tambores En Benniras and Hardway Bros Meets Monkton Uptown. If you haven't got it, get it here. The debut Electric Blue Vision track was a self titled electronic swoon with Emilia's celestial vocals floating by and if you haven't got that one you should get that too here.  

Now, today, comes the latest Electric Blue Vision release, out on Electric Wardrobe Records. Trance Stance was inspired by Emilia's outline for a song, one about the thrill of seeking someone out across a crowded dancefloor, the excitement of, 'waiting all night long just to rock your body down'. The music is a slow burning groove, chugging drums and bass, swampy guitars and some bleeps and bloops. Jesse made a connection with Emilia's lyrics to Joan Jett And The Blackhearts 1981 smash single I Love Rock 'n' Roll, Jesse's first ever single purchase and a record that probably provides all kinds of Proustian rushes for those of us of a certain age. As a result, a snippet of Joan ended up in Trance Stance (which also nods its head in the direction Dexys). 

The smokey, late night club vibe of Trance Stance comes with three remixes, all of which spin the song off in new directions. The Time Machine Dropouts remix comes via Matt Gunn (Electric wardrobe's main man) and Chad Jackson, an irresistible phunked up version with loops of bass, a floor filling drum break and whooshes. San Francisco's Cole Odin hits the space rock buttons, a cosmic trip with the controls firmly set for going further. Lastly Jesse provides his own remix, done with his 10: 40 headgear on, the Haight Steppin Remix, stripped down, gnarly electronics with whistles. Trance Stance is at Electric Wardrobe Records here. 

Joan Jett had form for rocking up with well chosen cover versions. I Love Rock 'n' Roll was originally released by Arrows in 1975. While on tour with The Runaways a year later she saw Arrows perform it on TV. Joan recorded and released a version with a pair of Sex Pistols, Steve Jones and Paul Cook in 1979 but then re- recorded it with The Blackhearts in '81. In 1981 Joan followed her hit single with another one, her cover of Crimson And Clover, a song that is peerless in early 80s pop- rock. It was originally a 1968 hit for Tommy James And The Shondells, bubblegum psyche- pop. Joan's version is totally badass, as they say.

Crimson And Clover