Half An Hour Of Fairplay

It's a Timothy J Fairplay weekend at Bagging Area. Here's thirty-six minutes from Tim's back catalogue to give your Sunday a jumpstart- rapid fire drum machines, vintage synths and keyboards, hi- hats and all manner of uptempo analogue, sci fi soundtracks. Four tracks under his own name and two from his ravey Junior Fairplay alter ego (Faxes From The Future and Sugar Puss). Stream it at Mixcloud or get it here. 

• The Cat Prowls Again
• Faxes From The Future
• Honecker Complex
• Jennifer Has Some Strange Ideas
• My Etherealrealness
• Sugar Puss

I had my ears syringed on Thursday after weeks of muffled hearing and some discomfort. When I got water in the right ear, from dunking my head under the water in the bath, it felt like it was in there for ages afterwards and I haven't been fully hearing on my right hand side for a long time. Walking out of the audiologist on Thursday evening I felt like I'd been given new ears and since then I can actually hear the cavities in my head, a sort of natural reverb. It's a remarkable sensation. It hasn't done anything for my tinnitus but I didn't expect it to but being able to hear in stereo and more clearly is a blessing. The pleasures of middle age eh?

Sugar

I'm launching into what may be an ill conceived Friday series here at Bagging Area. Last Friday I posted several songs about honey- songs by Death In Vegas, The Jesus And Mary Chain, The Pastels and Spacemen 3. Today's musical foodstuff is sugar, delicious, addictive, lipsmacking sweet stuff (that a report recently said is the real cause of the modern obesity crisis in the western world). A quick search of my hard drive reveals I'm spoilt for choice when it comes to sugar.

The lightest song on The Stone Roses debut album from May 1989 was about a girl, a sugar spun sister, opening with John Squire's crystalline guitar chords and Ian's softly sung vocals. The chorus turns things a little in what seems on the surface to be a fairly simple love song- the sky going green, the grass blue, M.P.s involved in solvent abuse- all these things would happen before she is happy with him. There's a bit after the second chorus where there's a pause and in the gap Ian sings 'my hands..... are stuck to my jeans' which is very nicely done (and which for years I misheard as 'stuck to my dreams'). The sugar analogy is back at the end as Squire winds things up- she is the candy floss girl, he the sticky fingered boy.

(Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister

In 1997 Yo La Tengo put out a career highpoint, the double album I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, an album which is a masterpiece of its kind. Sugarcube was in the middle of side 1 and later released as a single, 3 minutes 21 seconds of New York dreamy, soft noise perfection.

Sugarcube

Lyrically it's a bit more oblique than The Stone Roses sugar spun song but I think it's about the same thing ultimately...

'Whatever you want from me
Is what I want to do for you
Sweeter than a drop of blood
On a sugarcube
And though I like to act the part of being tough
I crumble like a sugarcube
For you'

More sugar vicar? 

AR Kane's sugar song came out in 1989 and is a lilting, off-kilter song, acoustic guitars and odd tunings and another case of sugar being a female who's a little too sweet.

Sugarwings

There's loads more sugar on my hard drive- The Orielles have a song from last year (with an Andrew Weatherall remix to boot) called Sugar Tastes Like Salt, Slowdive's recent triumph gave us Sugar For The Pill, there's some Balearic Sugar Water from Kamasutra, Echo And The Bunnymen's glorious 1987 single Lips Like Sugar and Secret Knowledge's Sugar Daddy, a 1994 epic from Kris Needs and Wonder. I think I've posted all of these before at some point. There's plenty more sugar in my record collection too but I'll wrap this up with one more sugary delight before our teeth fall out. Four years ago Timothy J Fairplay released a 12" in his Junior Fairplay rave guise, a back to the old skool circa 1990-1 retro-rave track that I love to pieces. Created using solely a breakbeat and a Korg 1, a vocal whoop and a stacatto 'yeah!', and then released on one sided purple vinyl, it is fun bottled, the future backwards. Sugar Puss. 



Now go and clean your teeth. 

Omens Of Awareness

We are going on holiday today, six days away for half term. Some friends won a holiday which they then realised they couldn't go on, and very kindly gave it to us. We have four nights near Paris followed by two on the Dutch coast, not far from Amsterdam (although given we'll have the kids with us the coffee shops and Sex Museum will not be on the itinerary that most people have suggested to us). Lucky us though- we'd never usually go abroad at this time of the year. It is also Mrs Swiss' birthday today, so she'll start her birthday in Manchester and finish it near Paris, via Dover, Calais and a cross channel ferry. See you all next Sunday.

Current Bagging Area favourite Timothy J Fairplay has just put out another track under his Junior Fairplay alter ego. It has old school rhythm and synths.



Like the Fairplay track I posted last Monday Omens Of Awareness comes with a story...

'About 10ft tall with hairy green skin, yellow triangular eyes and red veins across the forehead. In place of a mouth there was what appeared to be a metallic chain or fence'. Security guard Fortunato Zanfretta was later questioned by medical experts during deep hypnosis. The 26 year old Italians astonishing ordeal began in the village of Torriglia near Genoa. He was patrolling after midnight when his car stopped mysteriously . He saw four lights and jumped from the car, gun in hand. 'Then I was hit from behind and whirled round and shone my flashlight and saw an enormous green creature'. he said later. 'That was the last thing he remembered until nearly two hours later when he was awakened by a blinding light and tremendous roar of a UFO blasting off. Leading medical hypnotist and physician Dr Mauro Moretti said afterwards 'I believe 90% of what he said was the truth. You cannot invent things under hypnosis'. It was only three days after the hypnosis session that Fortunato had his second meeting with the the unearthly visitors. He was driving to the same village when a strange force seized his car and took him to the place he had met the spaceman before. In his second hypnosis session he said he was again taken aboard a UFO and examined by 10 great creatures with triangular eyes. Fortunato said that although they spoke no Italian or any other human language, they communicated with him by 'light signals and sounds' transmitted through a helmet placed over his head. The helmet was so tight it gave him a headache.'

Dr Lazarus

Timothy J Fairplay rises another notch up in the Bagging Area posting rankings with a track from a forthcoming e.p. (Love And Columbium). With electronic/dance music so much of it is about the quality of the sounds, and this one has really good sounds and is really absorbing. Plus, another video to give you sleepless nights.



In his Junior Fairplay guise Tim put 50 handstamped vinyl copies of a four track 12" called How Do You Like Me Now? on Juno last week. Four tracks of electronic heaven. I don't know how many are left but it's a maximum of forty-nine. There are snippets of all four below.

Edit- the 12" records; they've all gone.

Fairplay And Bratley

Here's a couple of recent things from the Scrutton Street Axis, both tracks from the house music end of things and both a tad spooky. Craig Bratley's Beat On The Drum has some deep, repetitive techno with a robotic voice and a very freaky,disturbing video.



Timothy J Fairplay has posted the demo of another Junior Fairplay tune on Soundcloud, Faxes From The Future (winner of the most retro-futurist song title award 2014). An early 90s breakbeat, one fingered keys, disembodied voices, oscillating noises. I'm really hoping that there's going to be a Junior Fairplay album.

Sugar Puss

This has appeared from Timothy J Fairplay in a Junior Fairplay guise and it's out soon on one-sided purple vinyl. Purple! One sided! No giant fold out poster though.

This is dance music like they used to make in the 90s- a breakbeat, a shout and some Korg. Highly effective and makes you tingle a little at the memory of nights lost in dark clubs full of dry ice and people who swore you were their best friend. And maybe briefly you were.