From Belfast

Something else from 2025 that I missed and was sent last week by a friend- a cover of Orbital's Belfast by Spanish artist Pepe Link. You might think that a cover of Belfast is entirely unnecessary at this stage in proceedings but I think this casts doubt on that thought...

It's chiller than chilled, totally inappropriate for this Arctic blast we've been experiencing recently. The trumpet line, played by Pepe Navarro, is gorgeous. It crosses the line into easy listening I guess but on occasion that's a line worth crossing. 

In 2024 Orbital came back with their own new version, Tonight In Belfast, together with DJ Helen and David Holmes and Mike Garry's words- a celebration, a eulogy, a love letter- at the heart of a new take on Belfast. 

Yep, that still has the capacity to move me. 

In 2018 Orbital came back with an album, Monsters Exist, that was led by this track, Tiny Foldable Cities, that showed the Hartnoll brothers still had the chops and the capacity to surprise. Tiny Foldable Cities is as good as anything they've done since their golden years in the 90s. 

Tiny Foldable Cities

Bagging Area End of Year List 2025

Today marks the fifteenth Bagging Area end of year list- let's get the album above out of the way first. Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2, put together by myself, Martin, Dan, Baz and Mark with sleeve art by Rusty and released on Golden Lion Sounds, came out in the summer. It opens with a previously unreleased Sabres Of Paradise track, the full length, thirteen minute techno skank of Lik Wid Nit Wit, and then goes on to showcase brand new tracks by Dicky Continental, Unit 14, Richard Fearless, A Certain Ratio and Number, Red Snapper, Richard Norris, David Harrow, Bedford Falls Players and a cover of Two Lone Swordsmen's Sick When We Kiss by Sleaford Mods. 

Piccadilly Records put it at number 12 in their Top 30 Collections in their end of year booklet (sandwiched between Pink Floyd and The Fall). If you take out the re- issues and just include the compilations, we came in third. Phonica, a very fine record shop in Soho, put it at number five in their compilations chart. It still makes me shake my head in disbelief sometimes that we have accomplished it- the quality of the music is so high, everyone involved is at their very best. 

The entire enterprise is a tribute to Andrew Weatherall, his music, life and work, and given that Andrew's standards were so high, it's no surprise that the people he worked with and who are inspired by him- like the artists on Volume 2 (and Volume 1)- are all also people who produce and create such good music. There are a handful of copies in some record shops- Piccadilly, Stranger Than Paradise, Phonica- and there might still be a few at Golden Lion Sounds but it's close to selling out its entire run of 1500 copies and once they're gone, they're gone. 

Another compilation album I've enjoyed this year is Sean Johnston's A Love From Outer Space, a celebration of the travelling cosmic disco started by Sean and Andrew Weatherall in 2010 and still going boldly to this day. The album starts with a Neville Watson dub of The Blow Monkeys and takes in Phil Kieran (remixed by Andrew), Laars, Secret Circuit, Duncan Gray, Das Komplex, Brioski and many more. Cosmic chug, never knowingly exceeding 113 bpm. 

The third compilation album that has rocked 2025 is Ein Null: 10 Years Of Sprechen, a ten track round up of the Manchester label's artists with new tracks from A Certain Ratio, Psychederek, The Thief Of Time, The Utopia Strong and more. 

The best new old music of 2025 includes Husker Du's The Miracle Year: 1985, a huge live album showing Husker Du at their mid- 80s peak, on fire. I loved R.E.M.'s re- released Radio Free Europe EP which included the semi- legendary Mitch Easter Dub Mix. The Richard Sen remixes of John Grant, sitting unreleased since 2017, finally saw the light of day. My year started with Bob Dylan and the film A Complete Unknown and I've been dipping in and out of Dylan all year as a result. I haven't committed to the latest edition of The Bootleg Series, Volume 18, but have played his 1962 song Rocks And Gravel repeatedly (unreleased in 1962 and part of this year's Bootleg Series Through The Open Window, 1953- 1962). The Return Of The Durutti Column, a comprehensive and remastered re- issue of the 1980 Durutti Column debut is stunning too. Aphex Twin's continued visits into his vaults saw him put Zahl am1 live track 1 up on Soundcloud, a typically brilliant AFX track. Volcanic Tongue, a compilation of obscure, outsider bands from David Keenan's label of the same name was a winner too, with 20 slices of eclectic, underground music dating from 1968 to 2013. 

Albums of 2025

All of these abums have been somewhere near my various listening devices this year and all are albums I'll come back to again- Reverb Delay's The Ghosts Of Dawn, David Harrow's Accelerated Life, a pair of albums from 100 Poems, Rodeo Disco and Let The Horse Run Free, Evan Dando's Love Chant, Sonar// Radar's Weak Sun, Sonnenspot's Sonnenspot, SubDan's Innerleben, Anywhere by Causeway, Red Snapper's Barb And Feather, Decius Vol. II (Splendour & Obedience), Daniel Avery's Tremor, Five Green Moons' very recently released and probably should be in my top ten Moon 2, Rose City Band's Sol y Sombra, Dub Syndicate's Obscured By Version, The Orb's Buddhist Hipsters, Faded by The Liminanas, the vinyl releases of Thought Leadership's Ill Of Pentacles and Ace Of Swords albums, Coyote's Wailing To The Yellow Dawn, Half Man Half Biscuit's All Asimov And No Fresh Air, Jezebell's Jezebellearic Beats Volume 2, KiF's Still Out, Warrington- Runcorn New Town Development Plan's Public Works And Utilities, Tortoise's Touch, Pye Corner Audio's Where Things Are Hollow and Stereolab's marvelous comeback Instant Holograms On Metal Film.

10 Death In Vegas: Death Mask

Four sides of emotional and purist machine techno from Richard Fearless- side four in particular with Your Love and the title track is an immersive, psychedelic techno trip. 

9 Dean Wareham: That's The Price Of Loving Me

On the former Galaxie 500 songwriter, singer and guitarist's fourth solo album, he got back with producer Kramer and they caught Dean at his best- reverb drenched guitars, a dreamy production and a set of reflective, witty and wise songs. Understated but I kept coming back to it. 

8 Mogwai: The Bad Fire

Released at the start of the year, Mogwai are always an essential listen and this album is as good as any they've made- walls of guitars, huge melodies, songs that scrape away and soar. Some members of the band were going through tough times when it was recorded and you can hear the catharsis in the grooves of the album. Fanzine Made Of Flesh may be song title of the year too (although Half Man Half Biscuit's Horror Clowns Are Dickheads runs it close). 

7 Syd Minsky Sargeant: Lunga

Syd's solo album, a switch from the tough, electronic beats and rhythms of Working Men's Club, is a folky, downbeat treasure trove of song, with Nick Drake and Syd Barrett both sounding like they're there inside the songs. Try Long Roads for a taster of Lunga's delights...

6 Adrian Sherwood: The Collapse Of Everything

Adrian Sherwood doesn't release many albums under his own name and on the basis of The Collapse Of Everything he should do it more often. Dub is the foundation (as ever) but The Collapse Of Everything rolls and tumbles between all kinds of sounds and genres, a free flow of sound and texture with a supporting cast including Brian Eno, Keith Le Blanc and Doug Wimbish, and mostly sounds cinematic, like it's the soundtrack to something. An On U Soundtrack. 

5 Escape- Ism: Charge Of The Love Brigade

Ian Svenonius and Sandi Denton's fourth album is short and sweet, just ten songs and just a little over thirty minutes long but it's been near my turntable since its release in March. Minimal sounds, fuzz guitar, vintage synth drones and hissy drum machine, lyrics pared back to key ideas and delivered with drop dead insouciance- on Last Of The Sellouts Ian is both tongue in cheek and deadly serious. One Of The Greats performs the same dead pan trick. On Fire In Malibu he sounds like he's been tipped over the edge. For a while I thought this might be my favourite album of 2025. 

4 Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe: Liminal

The third of a trilogy recorded by Eno and Wolfe, Liminal is a joy, Liminal is an album that melds songs with ambience and comes up with something very beautiful- the soundtrack to a dream, a simple sounding but very deep record. 

3 Sewell And The Gong: The Patron Saint Of Elsewhere

I've listened to Sewell And The Gong as much as any other artist this year and the album, Patron Saint Of Elsewhere, could easily have topped this list. Seven tracks with pastoral roots, folk melodies and motorik rhythms, bridging the space between the bucolic and the cosmic. Sumptuous and wondrous and a little frayed at the edges.

2 Kieran Hebden and William Tyler: 41 Longfield Street Late 80s

41 Longfield Street Late 80s is a wonderful record- William Tyler's guitar playing and Kieran Hebden's ambient laptop production complementing each other and bouncing off each other, from the extended free form cover version of Lyle Lovett's If I Had A Boat, to the more Four Tet sounds of Spider Ballad through to the album's closer, the intense distortion and acoustic guitars of Secret City, it never lets up and keeps giving.

1 Andy Bell: Pinball Wanderer

Andy Bell bounces around from Ride to GLOK to his solo records, finding time to record with a slew of other artists, and spent much of 2025 on the road with Oasis. In February he released Pinball Wanderer, the title a nod to his musical ricochets, an eight song album that he completed under the influence of extreme jet lag. Dot Allison and Michael Rother appear on his cover of The Passions' I'm In Love With A German Film Star. On Apple Green UFO he channels The Stone Roses, a song they should have written after they made Something's Burning and elsewhere he travels cosmische. His guitar playing is lighter than air, krauty and glistening, and on the title track he transports the spirit of Bert Jansch and Pentangle from the late 60s to 2025, folk melodies married with 21st century psychedelia and shuffly drums. 

Pinball Wanderer

Singles/ Tracks/EPs of 2025

I've tried to not just repeat tracks from the albums in the list above in order to make this list a standalone one. All of these singles/ EPs/ one off releases were of note in 2025...

Hugo Nicolson's Black Stick, M- Paths' Emotivated, Matt Gunn's Nowhere, Dirt Bogarde's Pihkel, a clutch of Richard Norris releases including his remix of Pale Blue Eyes' How Long Is Now and his remix of Wildflower by Gulp, Puerto Montt City Orchestra's And We'd Be So Happy, Florecer's Breathy Drops, Statues' The Pilina Experiment, several Pye Corner Audio tracks including Galaxies and the Matrix EP and Saint Etienne's Glad. 

And here's 25 for 25...

25 Factory Floor: Between You

24 The Moonlandingz ft. Iggy Pop: It's Where I'm From

23 Andy Bell ft. Dot Allison and Michael Rother: I'm In Love... (Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s Remix and Dub)

22 10:40: An Alternative History

21 Joao Leao: One Of These Things First

20 Raz and Alfa: Windowlicker

19 Rude Audio: Strange Phenomena EP

18 Factory Floor: Tell Me 

17 Psychederek: Thinkin' Bout U

16 Pandit Pam Pam: The Senator

15  Le Carousel: We're All Gonna Hurt

14 Saint Etienne: Alone Together Remix EP

13/ 12 Various remixes of The Cure's Songs For A Lost World but especially the Four Tet remix of Alone and the Orbital remix of Endsong

11 Daniel Avery ft. Cecile Believe: Rapture In Blue (Midnight Version)

10 Coyote: Battle Weary

9 Adrian Sherwood: The Grand Designer EP

8 Coyote and Peaking Lights: Love Letters/ So Far Away

7 Deeply Armed: The Healing (plus the remixes by Keith Tenniswood and Richard Fearless) 

6 Sewell And The Gong: Quiet Storm Remixes (Ruf Dug, Chris Coco)

5 Alex Kassian x Spooky: Orange Coloured Liquid

4 Black Bones: Album Sampler (this release is some kind of blending of an EP, an album, a compilation of 12" singles- whatever it is it's fantastic)

3 Klangkollektor: Dubtapes Volume Two

2 The Light Brigade: Shuffle The Deck

1 Four Tet: Into Dust (Still Falling)

Sheer joy from Four Tet, sampling/ reworking a Mazzy Star song. It was released in June and it lit up summer. It's still doing it in the depths of winter, Hope Sandoval's voice spinning against Kieran Hebden's skippy rhythms- emotive, trippy, endlessly rewarding. If you buy it on 12" there's a stripped down, subtler version of the B-side which hits a slightly different spot.  

I've probably missed something and there will inevitably be a record, track or album I pick up on in early 2026 which should be part of one of these lists. The nature of lists is that they're incomplete. Hopefully 2026 will continue to throw up more great music and more pop culture for us to listen to, dance to, obsess over and dissect. And maybe there will be a Sounds From the Flightpath Estate Volume 3...

An Hour Of Sunshine From Glasgow And Two Hours Of Do!! You!! From Richard Sen

John Fenner of Glasgow did this mix recently and shared it, Cafe Del Muir, an hour and seven minutes of sunshine for a rainy day in Glasgow (or anywhere). It's a blend of old and new and some of the tunes John selected came via recommendations from this blog- it's nice to see the ripples that go out and come back. There's a couple that are new to me as well and so the ripples go back out again. You can find Cafe Dal Muir at Soundcloud. 

• The Chemical Brothers: One Too Many Mornings
• Four Tet: Loved
• Saint Etienne: Alone Together (Hove Lawns Sunset Mix)
• The Cure: Pictures Of You (Extended Dub Mix)
• The Vendetta Suite: Warehouse Rock (Timmy Stewart's Six Minutes To Sunrise Mix)
• Sinead O'Connor: You Made Me The Thief Of Your Heart
• The Main Stem: Since You Left (Prins Thomas Miks)
• 10:40: Kissed Again
• Bal5000: Bleu Infini
• The Blow Monkeys: Save Me (Neville Watson Dub)
• The Light Brigade: Only Love Can Save Us
• Orbital: Belfast (ANNA Ambient Mix)

On Friday Richard Sen hosted his weekly Do!! You!! radio show, two hours of top tunes from a man who knows his musical onions. Richard played three tracks from our forthcoming Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 album (and ave us a shout out) so if you're itching to hear three of the tracks from it- the unreleased version of Lik Wid Nit Wit by Sabres Of Paradise, Red Snapper's Qraqeb and Sleaford Mods cover of Two Lone Swordsmen's Sick When We Kiss (retitled as sick wen we x) then this is the place to do it until the vinyl copies start arriving on doormats and in porches. As well as those three Richard plays tons of other great tracks, including some classic trance, breakbeat, and some very deep cosmic disco. Listen here. 

Endsong

The Cure's remix album, a slew of artists tackling songs from last year's Songs Of A Lost World, promises to be one of 2025's highlights. The recent Four Tet remix of Alone has now been joined by Orbital's version of Endsong, the album's final track and Robert Smith's meditation on staring into the abyss of loss, grief and memory, 'left alone with nothing at the end of every song'. 

Endsong

On Endsong (Orbital Remix) the Hartnoll brothers turn their hugely emotive techno up to eleven and take The Cure to new places. Skyscraping, beautiful, cosmic gloom.  

An Hour Of The Jezebell Takeover

Last weekend's Jezebell Takeover at The Golden Lion in Todmorden was a lot of fun, two days of DJs and a live act playing to a full house. Saturday kicked off with Nessa Johnston getting things into gear quickly and setting the pace for everyone who followed. ACR's Martin Moscrop played a set that took in dub and disco, including a low slung dubbed out cover of Born Slippy, and at just after 8pm OBOST played a live set. 

OBOST is Bobby Langfield, ridiculously young, still in his teens- synths, keys, laptops, a microphone and an hour of uptempo electronic music that sounds like it has decades of experience behind it. Jamie Tolley took over at 9 and took things up a notch again, bpms and energy levels rising. At one point he dropped As I Ran by Yame, a bit of an ALFOS at The Lion moment last year and the pub erupted. The Jezebell headliners took over at 10, Jesse first and then Darren. The floor was packed, a mix of youth and older dancers...

I had to run for a late train back to Manchester so missed the last our of Darren's set but was back in the pub on Sunday afternoon where Jesse and Darren were starting proceedings off. Maybe they'd stayed up and played straight through. My guest slot was at 4pm and I had a few technical difficulties at first- I accidentally cued up a track from Jesse's USB instead of mine, then the right hand deck got stuck in an emergency loop and things took a little while for me to sort. Eventually Martin Moscrop turned the deck off and on again and as usual with piece of IT support advice it did the trick. Adam Roberts, due to play after me, was also official photographer. All the photos here are his and if nothing else he made me look like I know what I'm doing. 

I came off the decks feeling it had been a bit of a nightmare- technical issues, trying to cram too much into an hour- but looking at it now, a week later, it seems ok. The link below is the set recreated at home.

Bagging Area At The Jezebell Takeover

• Moon Duo: In A Cloud
• Durutti Column: For Belgian Friends
• The Charlatans: Trouble Understanding (Norman Cook Remix)
• The Beta Band: I Know
• Dub Syndicate: Right Back To Your Soul
• Soft Cotton County: The Future's Not What It Used To Be (Five Green Moons Remix)
• David Holmes: Blind On A Galloping Horse (Sons Of Slough Remix)
• Totem Edit 12: Feel
• Mogwai: The Sun Smells Too loud
• Orbital, David Holmes, DJ Helen and Mike Garry: Tonight In Belfast

Adam Roberts followed me, four four house and disco action and then Kim Lana. We had to leave so missed the remaining Sunday night fun, Stuart Alexander and then FC Kahuna, both of whom were outstanding by all accounts, Jesse saying Dan Kahuna was the weekend's highlight. Some hardy souls were back in The Lion on the Monday for St Patrick's Day celebrations, a live band and unplanned karaoke session. There's a second Jezebell Takeover planned for September. 

Jesse's been uploading recordings of some of the sets. His Saturday night hour is here and his Sunday afternoon set is here. 

I hadn't met Jesse or Darren before despite having had a several years strong online connection. It's always brilliant when people turn out to be as lovely in real life as they appear online and the crowd they drew to the Lion- regulars and newcomers- was testament to what they've built together as Jezebell. More power to them. 

Five Hours Of Music From Belfast And From Bristol

We had two days and nights in Belfast last week, flying out very early Wednesday morning and returning Friday midday. I'd never been before. It's a great city, we loved our time their exploring the place and while it might be a bit of a cliche to say that the Guinness is excellent, it really is. Belfast has many wonderful pubs in which to try the Guinness, loads of history (the difficult parts of which it doesn't shy away from and which are still part of its present) and lots to do. I definitely intend to go back. 

Belfast (David Holmes Remix)

We also missed David Holmes and Timmy Stewart DJing together which took place in Belfast last night. Luckily last week David returned to NTS for his monthly God's Waiting Room show, so we've got that to listen to instead- three hours of sounds starting out ambient and drifty, going cinematic and jazz- ambient jazz in fact- and then veering into psychedelic jazz and all sorts of interesting, superbly well stitched together songs. There's no tracklist available at the moment but you can tune in at Mixcloud. 

I also offer you this for Sunday, a two hour mix celebrating the sounds of Bristol courtesy of Nick Callaghan and Love Will Save The Day FM. Nick's put together an all vinyl, two hour celebration of The Wild Bunch, the Bristol collective and sound system from whom Massive Attack emerged. Surface Noise is two hours of Bristol based treasures, the sounds that The Wild Bunch were listening to and playing, the reggae and dub, mid- 80s hip hop, post punk, soul and New Wave sounds that fed into the ether and became such a key part of 90s culture. Find it here. It goes well with a pint or two of Sunday Guinness. 

The Bagging Area 2024 End Of Year Lists

The end of year list is a bit of an indulgence but also a good way to look back, revisit albums and songs and enjoy again the music that's made my year. People like lists. The exact positions are very arbitrary. What does it matter if I think something was the 26th or 27th best album of the year? It doesn't. But pulling together my favourite releases of the calendar year is always a fun thing to do and a good way to draw a line under the year. Last year I wrote a massive piece with multiple sections, categories, sub- categories and sub- lists, the total number of releases heading up towards three figures. I must have had more time to think about it and to write it last year than I do now. This year I've slim- lined it to two lists, one for albums and one for singles/ EPs/ remixes, each numbering thirty. 

Some years feel like singles years and some feel like album years- 2024 has been a big year for albums, some big hitters and 80s/ 90s bands and artists with big comebacks. I like to think I keep up with new music to some extent and the number of 'old' artists in this list makes me wonder how accurate that is, whether I'm kidding myself about that. But, as they say, it is what it is. Inevitably I will have missed something out from one of these two lists, if not both. Equally inevitably, I will buy an album in the new year that came out in 2024 which should have been in  the top 30. Nothing is ever fixed. Maybe that's the way it should be, a constantly fluid and shifting list. 

Singles, EPs and remixes

30 Silvertooth: Shut Um Down (A Dub From Outer Space)

29 The Liminanas and Bertand Belin: J'Adore Le Monde

28 Richard Norris: Weatherall's Last Stand

27 Jezebell: Weekend Machines EP

26 Causeway: Dancing With Shadows

25 Hinds with Grian Chatten: Stranger

24 David Harrow and Hugo Nicolson: Revolvalution EP and Rude Audio Remixes

23 Cole Odin and Marshall Watson: Voyager

22 Mick Harvey: When We Were Beautiful And Young

21 Electric Blue Vision: Trance Stance

20 BTCOP: The Custom 88 EP and Rude Audio Remixes

19 Mildlife: Return To Centauri

18 Puerto Montt City Orchestra: Hey You (10:40 Remix)

17 Pandit Pam Pam: Pass A Wish EP

16 Theis Thaws: Fly To Ceiling (David Holmes Remix)

15 Ammomite: You Don't Know Me (David Holmes Remix)

14 Ride: Last Frontier

13 C.A.R.: Anzu (Hardway Bros Remixes)

12 Acid Klaus: PTSD By Proxy EP

11 Raxon: Your Fault

10 Peak High: Dance Hall Days

9 Psychederek: Alt! EP

8 Iraini Mancini: Undo The Blue (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- animation)

7 Lisa Moorish: Sylvia (David Holmes Remix)

6 A Certain Ratio: It All Comes Down To This

5 Galliano: Cabin Fever Dub

A limited edition 7" single that was a very timely release with its line, 'don't want to take my country back man/ Want to take my country forwards', arriving to coincide with the Farage race riots in the summer, Galliano making a return to action and being a voice of reason. The song sampled Andrew Weatherall's remix of the band from 1992's Skunk Funk and borrowed Joe Strummer's vocal phrasings from This Is Radio Clash, and was a very unexpected treat. 

4 Amyl and The Sniffers: Big Dreams

As was this, a single ahead of the Melbourne pub punk's third album that showed a different side to the band. Over a picked, circling guitar riff and some spacious production Amy sang a punk rock torch song for all those people stuck in dead end towns and dead end jobs amid a cost of living crisis who want to get out and realise they're another year older and still stuck. The video for Big Dreams, with the band on motorbikes in the desert, was pure rock 'n' roll cool. 

3 Alex Kassian: E2- E4 (A Reference To E2- E4 By Manuel Gottsching)/ Mad Professor remixes

Twelve minutes and twenty one seconds of perfection- pulsing spaced out synths lines that lit up the summer. Not that summer really happened in the north of the UK this year. But when E2- E4 played it felt like it did. 

2 Orbital, David Holmes, DJ Helen and Mike Garry: Tonight In Belfast

Tonight In Belfast, Mike Garry's beautifully moving poem and voice over David Holmes' remix of Orbital's Belfast, a re- imagining of the Hartnoll brothers 1991 masterpiece is as good as anything else released this yea. It could easily be my number one. David remixed Belfast for the Orbital 30 project, updating it for the 2020s. DJ Helen got Mike Garry to speak his Tonight poem over the top. Mike's words speak to me in all sorts of ways. When I first heard it, so many of the lines for me were about Isaac, it seemed almost like he'd written it for me. Transcendent and emotional, everything music can/ should be. Magical. 

'Tonight I want to paint pictures of you/ Write poems and songs and novels all about you/I wanna hold you up so high you're gonna need a spacesuit'

'I love to speak your name aloud/ Simply 'cos I love its sound/ It feels like I'm kinda calling yer/ It feels like I'm kinda talking to ya/ It feels like I'm trying to break through/ You know across this divide'

'I'll tell you what/ Let's slip beyond the confines of this world/Let's forget every single thing we've learned/ Let's rewrite the way this world can turn'

1 Fat White Family: Bullet Of Dignity (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- Animation)

This came out in June, a 12" remix of one of the songs from Fat White Family's latest album Forgiveness Is Yours. The Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Remix takes Bullet Of Dignity, already a fucked up, sordid and groovy number and spins it further, kicking off with percussion, timbales, early 90s kick drum and then a squelchy bassline that oozes dance floor action. It builds, echoes rattling around and the rhythm gathering steam, some piano stabs and then finally, after a drop out and pause, Lias' vocal comes in, a blur of standout lines and attention grabbing phrases- 'You say you're just thirty one/ What's that in cannibal years?' I have no idea what it's about but it keeps giving with imagery, lines about fatal caricatures and suicidal cassettes, words walking in pairs, and how the dialogue's dubbed. There's a Middle Eastern/ North African guitar line that appears and re- appears. At five minutes it takes off even further, the groove and rhythms bouncing around, moving ever forwards. 

Bullet Of Dignity (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- Animation)

There are a couple of singles that should really be heading up the singles list but they're both going to appear as part of the albums near the top end of this second list, as much for variety as anything. 

Albums

Edit: I've forgotten to include any of 100 Poems brilliant trio of albums from this year- I knew I'd forget something! Out of the three the most recent, Balearic As A System Of Belief, just about edges it. Album number 31. 

30 The Jesus And Mary Chain: Glasgow Eyes

29 Fat White Family: Forgiveness Is Yours

28 Reverb Delay: The Storm Has Passed

27 SubDan: Inhale, Exhale, Repeat

26 Duncan Gray: Five Fathoms Full

25 Saint Etienne: The Night

24 Richard Norris: Oracle Sound Volume Three

23 Khruangbin: A La Sala

22 Mick Head and The Red Elastic Band: Loophole

21 The Woodentops: Fruits Of the Deep

20 Dirt Bogarde: Love, Sweat And Beers

19 M- Paths: Submerge

18 Coyote: Hurry Up And Live

17 Klangkollektor: Dub Tapes Volume 1

16 Various Artists: Virtual Dreams Volume II (Ambient Explorations In The House And techno Age, Japan 1993- 1999

15 David Holmes: Blind On A Galloping Horse Remixes

14 Fontaines DC: Romance

13 Richard Sen: India Man

12 A Certain Ratio: It All Comes Down To This

11 J- Walk: Broken Beauty

10 Five Green Moons: Moon One

9 Sedibus: Seti

8 Underworld: Strawberry Hotel

7 Four Tet: 3

6 Jamie Xx: In Waves

5 The Cure: Songs Of A Lost World

I had no idea, along with thousands of other people I imagine, that what I really needed in late 2024 was a new album from The Cure. The opener, Alone, released as a single in the autumn, was an exercise in majestic beauty and beautiful gloom, a three minute instrumental intro and then Robert Smith singing as well as he ever has, about life, love, loss, mortality, and 'the end of every song we sing'. Stunning. The album continued in that vein for the next seven songs, meditations on aging and loss, ending inevitably with Endsong.

4 GLOK/ Timothy Clerkin: Alliance

Electronics and guitars, swirling, woozy modern psychedelia recorded remotely after the pair met at Andrew Weatherall's funeral. A collision of early 90s sounds and 2024 trippiness. For some time it was all I played, a totally addictive seven track album. 

3 Bill Ryder- Jones: Iechyd Da

This could easily be album of the year, a January release that I keep returning to. Beautiful songs with acoustic guitars, pianos and grand, sweeping strings, a children's choir from a Birkenhead primary school, Mick Head reading Ulysses, a Gal Costa sample, and amazing stirring production- and then Bill's battered and beaten voice, sounding like a man who's reached the end of the road, has nowhere left to go, broken. The pain he sings about is from experience, the death of his brother as a child (Daniel fell off a cliff while they pair where on holiday, his family forever scarred) and mental health issues ever since. 

Nothing To Be Done

In the end though he gets there and we do with him- 'I'm still lost/ But I know love/ I know loss/ But I chose love'.

2 Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds: Wild God

Wild God was a step into the light, a conscious decision by Nick Cave to choose joy over sorrow- a line that appears in the song Joy where Nick is visited late at night by a ghost, a boy with giant sneakers and laughing stars around his head, who tells him, 'we've all had too much sorrow/ now is the time for joy'. It shakes me when I hear it. 

By this song, the fourth on the album, its clear we've stepped into a new Cave world. The first song, Song Of The Lake, explodes orchestrally Nick muttering 'never mind, never mind...'. It's follow by Wild God, with its heart stopping cry of 'bring your spirit down'. That is followed by Frogs, easily one of the best songs of this year and one of Cave's best, a song where Nick walks home on a Sunday in the rain, amazed at the wonders of the world around him- frogs in the gutter, the rain, Kris Kristofferson. The band sound reborn too. The previous albums were so grief stricken and spectral it was difficult for them to find a way in, Warren Ellis's synths were the core of the sound. Final Rescue Attempt tells of Nick being saved by a woman, and how after that, 'nothing really hurt again/ nothing ever really hurt/ not even real pain'. It's extraordinary stuff, magical, life affirming songs. By the end of side two, when former partner Anita Lane's voice appears (from Nick's answer phone. She died in 2021), we've gone through the wringer and come out the other side, the sheer joie de vivre evident throughout, no more so than in the fade out to Conversion where Nick and the choir sing/ shout, 'Stop! You're beautiful!', at each other.

Both Frogs and Wild God could have been near the top end of the singles list- I've not listened to any songs more than either of those two all year- but now they're fully part of the album as a whole, an album that when I put it on, I play all the way through and one I imagine I'll still be playing long into the future. 

Joy

1 Various Artists: Sounds From The Flightpath Estate

What else could it be? I did wonder whether I could/ should put the album me, Martin, Dan, Mark and Baz pulled together into my list, if doing it was a bit much. But in the end, it has been the album of the year for me. This time last year we were receiving tracks from the artists we'd approached, music from Justin Robertson, David Holmes, Timothy J Fairplay, Richard Sen, Hardway Bros, Sons Of Slough, Rude Audio and 10:40. Andy Bell's cover of Smokebelch arriving at the last minute was the cherry on top. An unreleased Two Lone Swordsmen track too.  

We knew we had something good, all the music was so strong, everyone had really responded so well to us (a bunch of unknowns let's be honest). But we did not expect what then happened. Selling out 500 vinyl copies in a day. Repressing 500 more and selling all of them too. Three of the tracks being played on Lauren Laverne's 6 Music show. Having the window display in Piccadilly Records. 

Giving a copy to Paul Simonon at The Golden Lion was as memorable and surreal as anything else that happened in 2024. Appearing in two end of year lists (Piccadilly records and Uncut). All of it has been unreal and yet, there it is, it happened. It would have been nothing without the music though- from the chunky cosmic chug of Sons Of Slough (recorded live at The Golden Lion) to Tim Fairplay's centurion dub, Justin's weird folk/ dub collision and Richard Sen's massive sounding Tough On Chug, Tough On The Causes Of Chug, the dub techno of Rude Audio and 10:40's fairground swirl, Hardway Bros writing our own theme, Theme For Flightpath Estate, and Holmes' magnificent Human: Remains, to Andy's gorgeous cover of Smokebelch, it's a brilliant and beautiful thing and it's my album of the year. To everyone involved, all the artists, my Flightpath friends, Waka, Gig and Matt at the Golden Lion and GLS, Andrew Liles, Rusty for his incredible sleeve art, and the memory of Andrew Weatherall (for whom it is a tribute)- thank you. 

Did someone say Volume 2? Sequels are hard....

Forty Five Minutes Of David Holmes Remixes

Summer has finally gatecrashed its way into northern England and we've had the sudden appearance of the aurora borealis all over the country (I missed this on Friday night, having gone to bed. I woke up on Saturday morning to everyone else's photos of the northern lights on display in the skies all over the nation). It's been too nice to spend too long sitting indoors in front of a computer screen so this mix was a little thrown together in a rush but it's turned out quite well- a selection of remixes of other artists by David Holmes from the last few years.

Forty Five Minutes Of David Holmes Remixes

• Andy Bell: The Sky Without You (David Holmes Radical Mycology Remix)
• The Vendetta Suite: Purple Haze, Yellow Sunrise (David Holmes Remix)
• Jo Sims: Bass- The Final Frontier (David Holmes Remix)
• Orbital: Belfast (David Holmes Remix)
• Lisa Moorish: Sylvia (David Holmes Remix)
• X- Press 2 ft. Kele Okereke: Phasing You Out (David Holmes Remix)

The Sky Without You was the opener on Andy Bell's solo album Flicker, released in 2022, a blur of backwards guitars and reversed vocals inspired by the backwards songs The Stone Roses recorded in 1989- Don't Stop, Guernica, Full Fathom Five, Simone (in fact, there's the germ of an idea for another mix...). David's remix came out on 10" vinyl and digital in October 2022, a remix inspired by microdosing during lockdown in Belfast. The I Am A Strange Loop EP also came with remixes by Richard Norris, bdrmm, A Place To Bury Strangers and Claude Cooper- even among that company Holmes' remix stands out.

The Vendetta Suite is Gary Irwin, a stalwart of the Belfast club and music world. The album The Kempe Stone Portal came out in 2021, with some remixes following a year later including David's remix of Purple Haze, Yellow Sunrise which is a psychedelic/ acid house monster, a huge sounding record that fills any space it's played in, a genuinely transportative piece of music.

Jo Sims' Bass- The Final Frontier came out on Pamela Records last year, Holmes' remix one of '23's highlights. Space house. 

David's remix of Belfast was done for Orbital's 30soemthing album, a celebration of three decades of Orbital. The original was recorded after the Hartnoll brothers played at David's club in Belfast in May 1990. The even more recent version with Mike Garry, Tonight In Belfast, is one of 2024's highlights. 

Lisa Moorish's Sylvia came out in spring 2024, a song recorded as a tribute to writer Sylvia Plath. In April we stayed in Heptonstall while attending the AW61 celebrations in Todmorden. Sylvia is buried in the graveyard at Heptonstall, that's her grave in the picture above (with Ted Hughes' name scrubbed off by Sylvia's fans). Her grave has hundreds of pens sticking out of the soil, left by visitors. Holmes' remix is crunchy acid house, and was played at AW61 by Mark and then not long after by me (duh!).

X- Press 2's Phasing You Out is from their 2023 album Thee, a return to form by Rocky and Diesel, with former Bloc Party singer Kele Okereke on guest vocals. Holmes' remix is a full on, city scape sounding record, ending in a sea of sirens and traffic after several minutes of busy, high tempo drums. Makes it quite difficult to sequence/ mix but it had to go on this mix as I really like it. 

Forty Minutes of Belfast

This occurred to me as an idea a few weeks ago. I've been playing Orbital and Mike Garry's Tonight In Belfast a lot, it's become one of those songs for me. The idea of segueing different versions of Belfast together popped into my mind driving home from work. I did wonder if it might be too much, an overload of Belfast but there are some things you can't have too much of. I toyed with some kind of Easter mix for today, and almost went with all the versions of A Man Called Adam's fabulous Easter Song but on Friday (Good Friday) this mix came back to me and I thought I'd resurrect it for today. Roll that stone away and immerse yourself in Belfast. Happy Easter. 

Forty Minutes Of Belfast

• Belfast
• Belfast/Wasted
• Tonight In Belfast
• Nothing Compares 2 Belfast

Orbital released Belfast in January 1991, one of three tracks on their III EP along with Satan and LC1. Belfast was discovered by David Holmes and Ian McCready after they booked the Hartnoll brothers to play their Space Base night in May 1990. Orbital left a tape with the track on, later on named after the city they had a great visit to and night out in. The vocal sample, also widely heard in The Beloved's Sun Rising single that year, is of soprano Emily Van Evera, singing O Euchari. The chiming synths, bubbling bass and operatic vocal combine to produce something genuinely moving, ecstatic and otherworldly- one of British house/ dance music's great moments.  

Belfast/ Wasted features the voice of Gavin Fulton, available on the CD/ booklet series Volume (Volume 3, 1992). It then came out as a single in 1995 and then on the Wasted best of compilation. Gavin's vocal takes the track into a new area. 

Tonight In Belfast has the voice of Mancunian poet Mike Garry, speaking the words to his poem Tonight. It's one of the best and most affecting single tracks I've heard this year, Mike's words perfectly accompanied by David Holmes' magnificent and euphoric remix of Belfast from Orbital's 30 project, their thirtieth anniversary box set. Mike's words and Orbital's music came together on the suggestion of DJ Helen. Mike's words come over like a eulogy, a hymn to a lost love- sometimes I find it difficult to hear it without thinking of Isaac. 

'Tonight

I just wanna paint pictures of you

Write poems and songs just about you

I wanna hold you up so high you're gonna need a spacesuit

I love to speak your name aloud

Simply because I love its sound

And it feels like I'm kinda calling you

It feels like I'm kina talking to you

It feels like I'm trying to break through

You know across this divide

I'll tell you what

Let's slip beyond the confines of this world

Let's forget every single thing we've learned

Let's rewrite the way this world does turn'

Nothing Compares 2 Belfast is from David Holmes' NTS show that he did in tribute and in memory of Sinead O'Connor following her death last year, Belfast with Nothing Compares 2U, with Sinead's voice at the end speaking directly and openly in the way she did. 

Miles And Miles And Miles And Miles

In some ways this track seems almost too easy. 

Take Orbital's Belfast, a track that in 1991 defined blissed out, emotive, euphoric, hairs on the back of the neck standing up house/ techno, get David Holmes to give it a sweeping, majestic, emotional  2022 remix and then in 2024, courtesy of DJ Helen, get poet Mike Garry to perform a new poem over it, one filled with those affecting, heartfelt and every day lines he's so good at. 

Lines like, 'I wanna hold you up so high/ You're gonna need a space suit', and, 'I wanna write your name across an empty beach at low tide', and, 'And it feels like I'm kinda calling you/ It feels like I'm trying to break through/ You know across this divide/ Cos we live such separate lives'. Tonight In Belfast- it's almost too easy but it works so very, very well. 

Necessary Genius

Necessary Genius came out yesterday, the new single from David Holmes ahead of his album in November, a fourteen track album titled Blind On A Galloping Horse. Necessary Genius rides in on a rattling drum machine and gliding synths, a kraut/ cosmische spliced with 80s electro- pop celebration of outsiders, artists, misfits, dreamers and believers, with vocals from Raven Violet. David's list includes Tony Wilson, Sinead O'Connor, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, Angela Davis, Andrew Weatherall, Nina Simone, Terry Hall and Samuel Beckett in its rollcall of cultural inspirations, of people to believe in, alongside northern soul, rock and roll, agitprop and refugees. It's the latest in Holmes' recent run of songs that once over send me straight back to the beginning, clicking play again and again. This one sounds like a classic 7" single from the glory years of that format, a short sweet blast of sideways pop music and clarion call.

Necessary Genius comes after Holmes' pair of singles It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love and Hope Is The Last Thing To Die (released in 2022 and 2021 respectively) and the long awaited release of that pair of songs on vinyl is finally happening in early November. Those two songs have been played round here as often as any others released since 2020 and I suspect Necessary Genius will follow suit with the rest of Blind On A Galloping Horse following close behind. 

A few weeks ago David made his monthly God's Waiting Room radio show at NTS a two hour tribute to Sinead O'Connor, finishing with a ten minute version of his remix of Orbital's Belfast with the vocal from Nothing Compares 2U mixed into it and then fading into an excerpt from an interview with Sinead. David read my blogpost and very kindly sent it to me. Up now for a limited time. 

Nothing Compares 2 Belfast

Tell Them A Story

A three for one offer at Bagging Area today to celebrate the weekend, the yin and yang of music. First this song came out in mid- October, Orbital with Sleaford Mods and a coruscating, furious and perfectly timed piece of music called Dirty Rat. 

'Shut up, you don't know what ya on about/ You voted for 'em, look at ya!/ You dirty rat'

'Blaming everyone at the hospitals/ Blaming everyone at the bottom of the English Channel/ Blaming everyone who doesn't look like a fried animal'.

Written for and about the people who voted for the shallowest talent pool the Tory party have ever fished in for government, the three Prime Ministers, one elected and two unelected, and the incompetent, mean spirited and downright dangerous cabinets we've suffered since 2019, the worst group of people to ever end up in power- this one's for you. 

If that seems a bit much, a bit too angry for your Saturday morning and you fancy something more uplifting, more chilled and in places a tad more spiritual, this is David Holmes at NTS eleven days ago, back with his two hour God's Waiting Room show. This one is a tribute to DJ Alfredo, the man who who DJed at Amnesia in Ibiza from the mid 80s onwards and who David and his friend Iain McCready encountered there in 1990, a DJ set that took in reggae, Grace Jones, The Clash, Italo house, Eurodance, Talking Heads, Kraftwerk, Brazilian flamenco and much more, pulled together effortlessly. Alfredo has recently suffered some poor health and is recovering from a stroke. David's show, two hours of Alfredo's Amnesia inspired Balearica, is here, an absolute joy to listen to. 

Bonus- if you needed it, here's Jezebell's summer stunner, Jezebellearic, eight minutes of blissed out beats and percussion, a lovely warm bassline, a sprinkling of hints of pop songs you might be able to discern and the voice of Alfredo talking about the people who came to dance to his music, the songs he played and how to make them dance 'you have to tell them a story'. Still available here for free. 

Hey Joe, We Ought To Try And Turn The World Around

Sometimes, rarely but sometimes, everything comes together, the stars align and the streams cross and you find yourself at the centre of something magical. The offer of a DJ support slot months ago for the five of us that admin The Flightpath Estate, a Facebook group set up to share the music of Andrew Weatherall, at The Golden Lion in Todmorden with David Holmes headlining was something that seemed unreal. As the months and weeks ticked by it became increasingly more real and then suddenly it became imminent, a matter of having to pull together some music, burn some CDs and think about how it might actually work. 

The Golden Lion is a traditional pub in an old mill town, tucked in the hills on the Lancashire/ West Yorkshire border. Run by Richard Walker and his partner Gig it has a history of nights with DJs and bands plus excellent Thai food, a one off place that is now stitched into legend, Andrew Weatherall and Sean Johnston's ALFOS nights here especially so. An older gentleman (a retired teacher) standing at the DJ booth in the early evening told me, 'this place is a portal. Outside is Todmorden, in here it's another world'.

A quick guided tour of the equipment, the relief that CDs burned at home worked on the CDJs and then we got into the fun of starting to play to an almost empty pub at 2.30pm. Some familiar faces arrived- hello Claire and Si- and the afternoon drifted into evening, the five of us taking turns to play. Baz played his set including songs from The Pogues, The Animals, Chain And The Gang. Martin played rockabilly and folk. I played half an hour of dub (see Sunday's post) and then some Weatherall inspired songs plucked from his NTS radio shows and mixes, some Durutti Column, Coyote's Weatherall tribute The Outsider, Section 25, Joe Gideon And The Shark's Civilisation and this sublime, ghostly cover of Fun Boy Three/ The Go Go's Our Lips Are Sealed

Our Lips Are Sealed

Dan took over for some properly mixed leftfield dance music as the afternoon became early evening and then Mark 'Rude Audio' Ratcliff played, dubby dance filling the pub. At around eight, and who knows where the time went, we stated swapping on and off and then David Holmes arrived. I always assumed that Mark would be the one to do the immediately pre- Holmes part, building the warm up and then handing over. For reasons I still can't unpick, I ended up behind the decks just before David made his way to the DJ booth and began to sort his stuff out, the pub now full with expectant revellers. Mark had played Sabres Of Paradise Lik Wid Not Wit and then I put something else on and then as David continued to get set up, I played L.U.P.O.'s Heaven Or Hell, classic 1990 Balearic house, and then went into Song For Denise by Piano Fantasia, assuming he'd be then wanting to get playing straight away. 'Great track', David said to me, 'Stick another one'. 

No pressure there then. So I played Hardway Bros' Argonaut, a Come Together referencing feel good Balearic chugger inspired by a boat trip in Croatia Weatherall and Johnston played. And with that, a brief chat with Mr Holmes, and then I'm standing next to him as he starts to play. Which is not what I expected to happen when I set out earlier that day.  

Holmes' set was astonishing, a roof raising four hour set with non- stop dancing from an ecstatic crowd, with some choice remixes of his own music, some Afro- beat, some acid disco, some funked up French stuff and then somewhere in the middle (I lost track of time a bit it has to be said), a song to get a middle aged, leftfield crowd punching the air and singing along...

Sinful

It was quite a moment. Much later and much fun having been had dancing, David finished with his recent remix of Orbital's Belfast, twelve minutes of sweet 1990 euphoria written after the Hartnoll's played at Holmes' Sugar Sweet club in Belfast, at a time when a lot of artists swerved Northern Ireland. 

We left the pub at some point, making our way through the town and up the hill to the place we were staying, one of those nights that seemed to go on forever but was over so quickly, amazed and honoured not just to have been there but to have been part of it. I think we're all still buzzing slightly from the excitement while still unable to believe it actually happened. Serious life goals stuff. 

Monday's Long Song

Is it too soon to be doing this? 

I watched the Proclamation ceremony on Saturday morning where the Privy Council (a Medieval body which advises the sovereign) met to formally announce the accession of Charles to the throne, making him King Charles III. It struck me watching at home that this outdated show of pomp and ceremony, is designed specifically to show those watching (us) that the monarchy (them) is a seamless inevitability which cannot be questioned and that we should know our place. No sooner has the old Queen died than the new King is signed in. The uniforms, costumes, parade of former Prime Ministers, throne, list of articles regarding the Scottish Protestant church, documents to be signed and arcane rigmarole is a form of control, reminding all of us where the power lies. It goes without saying this is a profoundly undemocratic- antidemocratic even- system, the eldest child of the sovereign immediately replacing the deceased. These gun salutes, heralds, marching soldiers, references to Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal and arcane conventions are no way for a 21st century nation to behave and this country needs to have a proper conversation about becoming a modern, grown up democracy where positions of political influence (including the head of state) are chosen by voters and not by accident of birth. I appreciate that many will not agree. 

Orbital's second album (known as Orbital II or the brown album) came out in May 1993, eighteen months after their debut (Orbital I or the yellow album) which was a wide eyed record, filled the optimism of the new decade, Chime and Belfast somehow reflecting the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of apartheid and release of Nelson Mandela, the popular revolt against the Poll Tax and subsequent fall of Thatcher, several summers of love and a sense that things might actually be getting better. The second album is a bit tougher, more techno oriented, pushing on and finding new ways to sound better. The two stand out tracks- Impact (The Earth Is Burning)  and Halycon + On + On -alternately want to wake the world up to climate catastrophe and allow the listener to dance away, tranced out and hypnotised. On Monday they build a classic Orbital track, seven minutes of loops and thumping drums, dancing synth toplines, a repetitive euphoria. 

Monday

Wednesday's Long Song

We got back from Gran Canaria in the early hours on Monday night/ Tuesday morning, Manchester welcoming us with drizzle and road works in a reassuring kind of way. Ten days in Gran Canaria was very much what we all needed, sunshine every day and not very much to do other than slow right down and potter between the pool, the beach and places to eat and drink. Usually when we go on holiday we're taking days to go out and do and see things, visiting cities and historical or cultural sites (and record shops). In Puerto Rico there wasn't much of that- a fantastic array of cactuses aside- so we ground to a halt. Much of the time it was too hot to do very much at all, the mercury rising to the mid- to- high thirties most days. On the descent from 30, 000 feet into Las Palmas airport my right ear unblocked itself, the congestion around my sinuses shifting completely which was worth the holiday in itself (even if I can feel it returning as I type this). 

While we were away it seemed like there were a lot of interesting musical releases which I'll spend part of this week catching up with. One of them was this, a David Holmes remix of Orbital's Belfast, part of a 30th anniversary album the Hartnoll brothers have released to celebrate three decades of music called 30 Something. Belfast came out in 1991 on the III 12" along with the tracks LC1 and Satan. Belfast was named after the experience Orbital had playing in the city after Homes booked them to play at the Art College in Belfast in May 1990. David's remix doesn't radically alter the original, instead tweaking it, updating it from 1990 to 2022 and just making it a bit moreso. Twelve minutes of euphoric blissed out splendor (with a tinge of melancholy)

Here's the original from the III 12" single with the famous sample of soprano (singer not gangster) Emily Van Evera, a sampled voice that appeared on The Beloved's The Sun Rising a year previously. 

Belfast

It's Going To Be A Fine Day Tomorrow

This is a 1992 remix of Orbital's Halcyon, spliced with Opus III's It's A Fine Day by Michael Anderson, both songs I adore, standout songs from the early 90s when dance music seemed awash with possibilities and the promise of being the soundtrack to a new decade/ world. 

Orbital's Halcyon borrowed from Opus III, a backwards piece of vocal from singer Kirsty Hawkshaw (who also starred in the video as a housewife losing it). The song Halcyon was dedicated to the Hartnell brothers' mother who had been addicted to the tranquiliser Halcion for many years, so the video is at least partly her story. The full eleven minutes of Halcyon (On + On) are a peak in Orbital's back catalogue, a back catalogue not exactly short of peaks.  

Halcyon 

Opus III were Kirsty Hawkshaw plus three producers- Ian Munro, Kevin Dodds and Nigel Walton. All also members of Spiral Tribe so their rave/ outsider credentials were second to none. It's A Fine Day was a big hit in 1992, crunching drums, rave keyboards and Kirsty's lighter than air vocal proving irresistible to the record buying public- hypnotic, trancey, loved up but with a slightly off kilter edge. 

It's A Fine Day 

It's A Fine Day's slightly off kilter edge comes perhaps from its origins in early 80s Hulme, part of Manchester just south of the city centre, where the concrete housing development known as the Crescents had been abandoned by the residents and families it had been built for and taken over by a more bohemian set of people. The Crescents were described as 'Europe's worst housing stock' but in the 80s were the home to all sorts of people looking for an alternative place to live. Edward Barton, a Manchester based poet and musician, wrote It's A Fine Day while he lived in Hulme. The song's first recorded appearance was in 1982 on the mini- album Jane And Barton, the words sung by his friend Jane Lancaster- an unsettling piece of acapella. 

It's A Fine Day

Kinetic Energy

Today is the last day of work in 2019 for me, the end of an extremely long feeling term. This week's posts have been largely dominated by anger in response to the UK in 2019 so there's a double reason for trying to end the week with some positivity and some uplift. This came out in 1992, truly a golden age for electronic dance music records, from the combined talents of Michael Hazell and Paul Hartnoll of Orbital plus Frank de Wulf on remix duties. Hazell and Hartnoll called themselves Golden Girls and the main elements of this track- Kinetic- have been re-purposed and re-used by Orbital umpteen times but never better than on this remix. From the celestial voices that open it to the insistent synth riff, the bleeps and flute/pan pipes part, this is the type of track that will have you throwing your hands in the air while blinking back tears. Optimistic, idyllic and emotive.

Kinetic (Frank de Wulf remix)

Focus Your Attention On A Spot

Today's post accidentally fits in really well with David Byrne's ideas about finding vocals and using them in new musical places (see yesterday's My Life In the Bush Of Ghosts post). A while ago someone somewhere, sorry I can't remember who, posted two Orbital tracks both released in 1990, one the B-side to Chime and the other a remix of that B- side from the Omen 12". Deeper and 2 Deep take the voice from a relaxation tape, designed to help people who were unable to relax or get to sleep, calm down and chill the fuck out. A warm, calming voice appropriated by the Hartnoll brothers and laid over some techno. Knowing, ironic, a bit trippy. 'Close your eyes and relax...'

2 Deep

I put both versions onto a compilation CD along with other similar stuff and found that they sounded really good driving to and from work. Thankfully they didn't cause me to relax so much that I fell asleep at the wheel. That would not have been relaxing.

Also from 1990 and in the same ballpark is this from Ed Ball's Love Corporation- sparkling, inventive acid house with a vocal found on a New Age, meditation tape, remixed by the King of Shoom Danny Rampling. 'Close your eyes and begin to breathe slowly and deeply...'

Palatial (Danny Rampling Remix)

'Revel in this sleep and I will return in a minute'

Maru

Plaid's new album Polymers is proving that experimental electronic music can be reflective of the early- to- mid 90s while also utterly modern, techno rhythms adorned with machine melodies- accessible, repetitious, hypnotic and at places liable to take your breath away. Orbital's remix of Maru proves that they haven't lost their touch either. A dancer.



Maru means circle in Japanese and is associated with goodness- a circle is used to mark correct answers on tests and exams (rather than a tick as we'd use). Maru is also a cat, a cat who lives in japan, and is apparently the most watched animal in the world with over 325 million views on Youtube. Here he is relaxing in a box.

Golden Girls

Yesterday one of our longest standing friends got married- we all met doing teacher training back in the early 90s. Today he and his new husband are holding a party for everyone who couldn't make the wedding. It will inevitably be a full on party, a celebration and a dance.

Back in 1992 Orbital remixed this track, a Michael Hazell and Paul Hartnoll co-production for Belgian label R&S, an Orbital track in everything but name. It is a full on party, a celebration and a dancer too.

Kinetic (Orbital Mix)