Daniel Avery And The Early Bird

No forty minute Sunday mix from me today- I've been away this week and haven't had much time. Instead, enjoy this sublime two hours from Daniel Avery and The Early Bird Show at NTS from last week. Daniel plays an early morning selection of songs and tracks, joining the dots between ambient, indie, trip hop and techno, with PJ Harvey, some of his own music, Sinead O'Connor, Two Lone Swordsmen, Holden Federico, George Clanton, James K, Deftones, Death In Vegas, Everything But The Girl, Skee Mask, Smashing Pumpkins, Interpol, Solvent, and Nulifer Yanya all making appearances. The full tracklist is here and you can listen here. Two hours well spent. 

I've posted two different Daniel Avery mixes previously. Both are still available to download. In November 2022 I put together a forty minute mix of remixes Daniel has done of other artists- it's quite intense and thumpy. 

Forty Minutes Of Daniel Avery Remixes 

• Enfant Sauvage: 58500 (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Saint Etienne: Fonteyn (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Leaving Laurel: Winter In The Woods (Daniel Avery Remix)
• David Holmes: Hope Is The Last Thing To Die (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Mandy, Indiana: Alien 3 (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Joshua James: Amber Rush (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Confidence Man: Feels Like A Different Thing (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Daniel Avery: Lone Swordsman (Chris Carter Remix)

Previous to that, in February 2022 when I started this Sunday mix series, the second forty minute mix I posted was a Daniel Avery one, thirty minutes of echo, reverb, FX and emotive ambient/ techno.

Half An Hour Of Daniel Avery

• Together In Static
• Illusion Of Time (Teodor Wolgers rework)
• Petrol Blue
• Lone Swordsman (Chris Carter Remix)
• Into The Voice Of Stillness
• A Story In E5
• Midnight Sun
• Lone Swordsman

Forty Minutes Of Daniel Avery Remixes

Daniel Avery's new album Ultra Truth came out on Friday, a record already sounding like a contender for album of the year. Across fifteen tracks Daniel's cavernous, euphoric/ anxiety inducing ambient/ industrial/ techno has been fine tuned into an emotive and immersive album. Back in January when I started this Sunday mix series the second week was an Avery half hour mix. In way of a follow up and to celebrate the release of Ultra Truth I thought I'd do a second Avery half hour but this time remixes, Daniel's of other people and one of Daniel, all dating from the last couple of years. The sounds that are trademark Avery- the reverb, the drums, the wall of fog and distortion, the thump of the kick drum, the wobbly synths- are present in many of these which range from fairly languid to full on 'panel beaters from Prague' techno (quote courtesy of Andrew Weatherall, who is never very far away). 

Forty Minutes Of Daniel Avery Remixes

• Enfant Sauvage: 58500 (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Saint Etienne: Fonteyn (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Leaving Laurel: Winter In The Woods (Daniel Avery Remix)
• David Holmes: Hope Is The Last Thing To Die (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Mandy, Indiana: Alien 3 (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Joshua James: Amber Rush (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Confidence Man: Feels Like A Different Thing (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Daniel Avery: Lone Swordsman (Chris Carter Remix)

Winter In The Woods

I got this picture of this sunset a couple of weeks ago in Nottinghamshire, a glorious pink and orange sky over the tree tops a few miles south of Nottingham. We stayed in a camping pod on a vineyard for a couple of nights. It already felt like the end of summer, that melancholy you get when you notice suddenly that its dark much earlier.

This song, Winter In The Woods, is from a duo known as Leaving Laurel (Pierce and Gordon- both made dance music separately before sharing some demos with each other in Laurel Canyon one day and then working on it together). Winter In The Woods is seven minutes of melancholy, starting ghostly and fragile, fading in with some static and then a gorgeous, introspective piano. Eventually a beat picks up and pushes it forward but there's no mistaking the bittersweet nature of it. The topline melody pulls at the heartstrings. The synth strings add some weight but it all feels pretty sad- dancing with tears in my eyes as Ultravox had it back in 1984. 

Daniel Avery- him again- has remixed it and we're straight into classic Avery mode, drums that sound like they were recorded inside a giant metal box (and as his studio is a shipping container they probably were), the synth strings slightly in the distance and that cavernous reverb surrounding everything. This fits right in with the music he's been making recently- Lone Swordsman, Love + Light, Together In Static. Beautiful, moving, instrumental music. 

Tragically, underlining all the melancholy present in the original and the remix, Pierce passed away in April this year after a terrible struggle with his mental health- Winter In The Woods, the remix and the forthcoming album are a tribute to Pierce and is dedicated to his memory and comes with the reminder that it's ok to not be ok and that you're not alone and that we all should 'slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast- you also miss the sense of where you are going and why' (Pierce Fulton). 

RIP.